MUST 
WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 


BY 

WALTER  B.  PITKIN 


NEW  YORK 
THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1921 


''•' 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
THE  CENTUBY  Co. 


FOREWORD 

The  Japanese  crisis  in  California  is  no  local  issue. 
It  is  one  minor  phase  of  a  world  problem  that  is  already 
immense,  intricate,  and  certain  to  grow  steadily  worse 
unless  the  most  drastic  steps  are  taken  in  the  near  future 
to  solve  it. 

The  diplomatic  complications  it  raises  are  mere  sur 
face  ripples.  Underneath  them  are  stirring,  fierce,  hu 
man  forces — hunger,  overcrowding,  suspicions  as  old  as 
Asia,  racial  habits  of  life,  and  the  fierce  pressure  of  un 
heard-of  new  wealth  seeking  unheard-of  profits  on  the 
last  frontier  of  finance,  which  is  China  and  Siberia. 

No  ordinary  office-holder,  no  bureaucrat,  no  diplomat 
trained  in  the  conventions  of  his  craft,  can  alone  cope 
with  a  problem  which  these  factors  dominate.  The  real 
Japanese  crisis  is  properly  a  task  to  which  the  united 
intelligence  of  the  best-informed  people  in  America  and 
Japan  must  devote  itself  for  a  long  time  to  come.  No 
new  " Gentlemen's  Agreement"  will  settle  anything. 
Neither  will  the  new  California  land  law  nor  the  League 
of  Nations  nor  the  China  Consortium.  Still  less  will 
either  the  propaganda  of  the  Japanese  or  of  the  Amer 
ican  exclusionists  or  of  the  "White  Australians." 

And  the  reason  for  all  this  is  quite  plain.  Beneath 
the  diplomatic  controversies,  beneath  the  pulling  and 
hauling  of  financial  and  commercial  interests,  the  roots 
of  the  trouble  lie  in  the  elemental  struggle  for  exist- 


vi  FOREWORD 

enee,  which,  since  the  World  War,  has  become  every 
where  hideously  evident  to  a  degree  which  not  even  the 
most  ardent  Darwinian  could  hope  for.  The  world  is 
short  of  food  and  clothes.  Too  many  babies  are  being 
born  in  the  wrong  places,  and  too  few  in  the  right 
places.  The  rich  lands  of  the  earth  have  all  been  occu 
pied,  and  the  poorer  acres  are  now  being  pressed  into 
service.  And  to  aggravate  the  whole  situation,  millions 
of  men  everywhere  are  honestly  trying  to  solve  their 
problems  of  living  by  the  use  of  political  notions  and 
political  machinery  that  are  grotesquely  inadequate  or 
even  false. 

So  far  as  American  opinion  is  concerned,  it  has  been 
perverted  and  tainted  by  the  ignorance  of  its  chief  in 
formants,  the  newspapers,  by  the  misrepresentations  of 
men  personally  interested  in  some  exploitation,  and  by 
the  honest  enthusiasms  and  exaggerations  of  patriots  on 
both  sides  of  the  Pacific.  And  this  poisoning  has  proved 
unusually  dangerous  because  the  American  public,  lack 
ing  first-hand  information  about  Japan  and  having  no 
direct  interest  in  that  country,  has  been  unable  to  ap 
praise  the  flood  of  fact  and  fiction  about  the  crisis. 

The  following  study  deals  with  the  five  major  aspects 
of  the  situation.  It  surveys  the  events  up  to  the  clos 
ing  weeks  of  1920;  it  analyzes  the  sources  of  misunder 
standing  between  the  Japanese  and  Americans;  it  in 
quires  into  the  genuine  conflicts  of  interest  and  policy; 
it  considers  the  various  possibilities  of  future  conflicts 
on  a  larger  scale;  and,  finally,  it  presents  suggestions 
for  a  fundamental  solution  based  upon  what  seems  to 
me  to  be  a  scientific  national  policy.  At  every  point  an 
effort  has  been  made  to  avoid  technicalities  of  law,  diplo- 


FOREWORD  vii 

macy,  and  scientific  theory,  in  order  to  bring  out  in 
simple  form  the  basic  truths  of  the  whole  affair.  This 
has  compelled  me  to  take  an  unduly  brief  and  somewhat 
dogmatic  stand  with  regard  to  a  number  of  matters  that 
are  still  decidedly  controversial.  In  no  case,  however, 
has  this  course  been  pursued  without  a  careful  weighing 
of  available  evidence. 

Virtually  all  accessible  sources  of  information  and 
opinion  have  been  inspected  and  in  some  measure  util 
ized.  Particular  attention  has  been  given  to  the  state 
ments  issued  by  pro-Japanese  and  anti-Japanese  propa 
gandists.  Many  American,  British,  Philippine,  and 
Japanese  officials  have  given  me  valuable  facts  difficult 
of  access;  and  business  men,  banking  experts,  econo 
mists,  and  export  and  import  houses  in  New  York  and 
San  Francisco  have  most  courteously  supplied  me  with 
significant  data.  More  than  two  thousand  newspaper 
reports  have  been  clipped,  and  in  some  cases  checked 
by  a  visit  to  the  scene  of  the  real  or  alleged  news.  Dur 
ing  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1920  I  journeyed  about 
three  thousand  miles  in  California  and  the  adjoining  dis 
tricts  of  Mexico,  interviewing  employers  of  Japanese,  a 
few  Japanese  farmers,  many  American  ranchmen,  real- 
estate  operators,  social  workers,  and  various  state  and 
local  officials  whose  work  brought  them  into  contact  with 
some  part  of  the  Japanese  problem.  Of  the  several 
hundred  Californians  whom  I  had  the  good  fortune  to 
quiz,  only  one  impressed  me  as  seeing  the  issue  in  all 
its  immense  intricacy  and  at  the  same  time  having  a 
statesmanlike  solution  ready.  That  man  was  Elwood 
Mead,  chairman  of  the  California  Land  Settlement 
Board,  who  has  made  his  State  famous  by  creating  farms 


viii  FOREWORD 

and  farm  villages  at  Durham  and  Delhi  which  promise 
to  solve  one  of  the  hardest  and  most  distressing  prob 
lems  of  American  life ;  namely,  the  upbuilding  of  healthy 
rural  communities  and  sound  agriculture.  Mr.  Mead's 
intimate  knowledge  of  California  farm  life,  and  his  wide 
experience  in  Australia  and  our  own  Pacific  coast  with 
the  broader  agrarian  problems,  enabled  him  to  give  me 
minute  information  that  aided  me  greatly  in  finding  facts 
and  in  interpreting  them. 

Next  to  Mr.  Mead,  my  most  fruitful  source  of  facts 
and  opinion  in  California  was  the  series  of  technical 
conferences  held  at  the  Scripps  Institution  of  Biological 
Research  at  La  Jolla  during  the  first  two  weeks  of  Au 
gust,  1920,  when  the  San  Diego  Conference  on  the  Prob 
lems  of  the  Pacific  was  being  held  near  by.  These  meet 
ings  were  planned,  organized,  and  conducted  by  Dr. 
William  E.  Bitter,  director  of  the  Scripps  Institution, 
whose  breadth  of  view  is  attested  to  by  the  variety  of 
witnesses  he  saw  fit  to  summon  for  discussion.  Virtu 
ally  every  scientific  and  practical  aspect  of  the  Japa 
nese  problem  was  represented  at  the  conferences  by  one 
or  more  specialists  or  men  of  affairs. 

In  the  prolonged  interchange  of  views  by  these  many 
gentlemen,  considerable  information  came  out  which  has 
materially  aided  me.  In  the  main  this  information  was 
more  or  less  scattered  and  incidental,  though  there  were 
two  outstanding  exceptions  to  this  rule ;  namely,  the  sta 
tistical  material  about  tendencies  in  world  population, 
which  was  brought  forward  by  Warren  S.  Thompson  of 
Cornell,  and  a  comprehensive  study  of  the  world  food 
supply,  present  and  future,  presented  by  E.  M.  East 
of  the  Bussey  Institution  of  Harvard.  Mr.  Thompson's 


FOREWORD  ix 

facts  were  in  the  main  new  to  me  and  more  than  ordi 
narily  enlightening.  So  much  so,  indeed,  that  I  have 
asked  him  to  permit  me  to  publish  here  most  of  his 
original  presentation.  Nearly  all  of  the  statistical  ma 
terial,  as  well  as  the  inferences  drawn  therefrom,  in  the 
chapter  entitled  "Who  Shall  Inherit  the  Earth?"  is  Mr. 
Thompson's.  Mr.  East's  general  conclusions  were  all 
nearly  identical  with  the  substance  of  my  own,  inde 
pendently  reached  through  other  channels;  but  both  his 
particular  facts  and  his  keen  statistical  analysis  gave 
me  new  and  much  desired  insight  into  one  of  the  funda 
mental  phases  of  the  Oriental  problem.  Finally,  the 
constructive  program  of  reciprocity  advanced  by  Mr. 
E.  T.  Williams  of  the  University  of  California,  formerly 
of  the  Bureau  of  Oriental  Affairs  in  the  United  States 
State  Department  and  technical  delegate  on  the  same  sub 
ject  at  the  Paris  Peace  Conference,  impressed  me  as  both 
just  and  ingenious. 

The  final  editorial  revision  and  the  handling  of  last- 
minute  news  could  not  have  succeeded  without  the 
prompt  and  efficient  assistance  of  Mrs.  Emaine  Sachs 
and  Mr.  Max  Watson,  both  of  whom  have  not  only  con 
tributed  material  of  value,  but  have  rewritten  entire 
chapters  for  me.  Mr.  Watson's  first-hand  knowledge  of 
Japanese  affairs  in  California,  coupled  with  his  close 
studies  of  rural  problems  on  both  the  Atlantic  and  Pa 
cific  coasts,  has  proved  particularly  useful. 

I  suspect  that  not  a  few  readers  will  pick  up  this 
volume  with  a  suspicious  squint  and  say  to  themselves, 
"Well,  I  wonder  who  hired  this  press  agent  to  tackle  this 
subject?"  This  is  the  natural  and  correct  attitude  to 
take  toward  any  book  or  article  or  even  newspaper  story 


x  FOREWORD 

dealing  with  an  important  international  problem  in  these 
days.  The  intelligent  American  has  been  stuffed  with 
propaganda  about  Russia,  propaganda  about  France, 
propaganda  about  Japan,  propaganda  about  almost 
everything  except  the  multiplication  table,  until  he  has 
come  to  believe  nobody  and  nothing.  By  way  of  star 
tling  him,  then,  and  of  protecting  myself,  let  me  state 
that  I  have  not  written  this  book  on  behalf  of  any  gov 
ernmental,  political,  commercial,  financial,  religious,  or 
other  organization;  that  I  belong  to  no  such  organiza 
tion;  and  that  no  such  organization  nor  any  person  has 
ever  suggested  my  writing  on  the  subject. 

I  became  interested  in  the  Japanese  crisis  late  in  1919, 
when  I  read  the  current  news  items,  articles,  and  books 
about  Japan  and  California  in  a  casual  attempt  to  get 
my  bearings.  Being  somewhat  familiar  with  the  ways 
and  the  agents  of  propaganda,  I  found  in  short  order 
that  nearly  all  of  the  information  and  opinion  being 
doled  out  to  the  reading  public  came  from  people  who 
had  personal,  political,  commercial,  or  social  connections 
with  one  or  another  of  the  many  groups  in  the  two 
countries  whose  interests  were  at  stake.  Knowing  that 
the  more  intelligent  classes  of  Americans  were  already 
nauseated  with  propaganda,  it  struck  me  that  perhaps 
they  would  like  to  read  a  book  on  the  subject  written  by 
somebody  who  had  none  of  those  particular  prejudices 
and  passions  which  invalidate  the  assertions  of  the  pro- 
Japanese  and  the  anti-Japanese. 

I  should  esteem  it  a  favor  if  those  persons  who  may 
criticize  my  findings,  other  than  in  technical  details, 
would  kindly  make  a  similar  statement  as  to  their  inter 
ests  and  motives.  It  would  be  a  waste  of  my  time  to 


FOREWORD  xi 

carry  on  a  debate  with  a  propagandist  whose  connections 
were  not  made  known,  and  it  would  be  unfair  to  the  read 
ers  of  such  a  discussion. 

WALTER  B.  PITKIN. 
New  York,  December  20,  1920. 


CONTENTS 


BOOK  I    THE  CRISIS  AND  ITS  COMPLICATIONS 

CHAPTER  PACK 

1  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 3 

2  As  JAPAN  SEES  Us 8 

3  FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOB  PEACE 23 

4  FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  WAR 34 

5  ILLUSIONS  ABOUT  JAPAN  .  46 


BOOK  II    THE  SITUATION  IN  JAPAN 

6  FORM  OF  GOVERNMENT 55 

7  CONTROL  OF  ARMY  AND  PUBLIC  OPINION  ....     62 

8  OVERPOPULATION 72 

9  WAGES  AND  EXPLOITATION 85 

10  RAW  MATERIALS,  RUSSIA,  AND  "A  PLACE  IN  THE  SUN"  101 

11  CLASS  ETHICS  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC  BUREAUCRACY   .  Ill 

12  JAPAN'S  MILITARY   IMPREGNABILITY 122 

13  MILITARY  ADVANTAGE  OF  Low  STANDARD  OF  LIVING  .  130 

14  WHAT  WOULD  WAR  BETWEEN  JAPAN  AND  THE  UNITED 

STATES  INVOLVE? 137 

15  THE  GREAT  DEADLOCK 154 

16  How  LONG  CAN  THE  DEADLOCK  CONTINUE?     .     .     .  167 

17  WHAT  SHOULD  WE  Do  ABOUT  IT?  .  .  178 


BOOK  III    THE  CRISIS  IN  HAWAII  AND 
CALIFORNIA 

18  JAPANESE  IN  HAWAII 185 

19  JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA 198 

20  THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS  .  235 


CONTENTS 


BOOK  IV    HOW  TO  DEAL  WITH  THE  CRISIS 
CHAPTER  PAGE 

21  OUR   NATIONAL   POLICY.    ON   WHAT   MUST   IT   BE 

BUILT? 269 

22  THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  TO-DAY  AND  TO-MORROW  .     .     .  289 

23  WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTH?  .     .     .     .     .     .  312 

24  "THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  AGES" 341 

25  A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY 361 

26  THE  GREATER  CRISIS  BENEATH  THE  JAPANESE  ISSUE  392 


BOOK  V    EXPERT  OPINIONS  ON  SOME  PROBLEMS 
OF  POLICY 

27  CONFLICTING    NATIONAL    POLICIES    OF    JAPAN    AND 

UNITED  STATES  (By  E.  T.  Williams')     .     .     .     .423 

28  CHEAP  LABOR  AND  STANDARDS  OF  LIVING  (By  Warren 

S.   Thompson] .  463 

29  NEW  AGRARIAN  POLICIES  IN  AUSTRALIA  AND  CALI 

FORNIA  (By  Elwood  Mead)     .......  474 

30  SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?    RACIAL  INTERMARRIAGE 

(By  8.  J.  Holmes) 481 

APPENDIX *     .     .     .  511 

INDEX 529 


BOOK  I 
THE  CRISIS  AND  ITS  COMPLICATIONS 


MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

CHAPTER  1 
MUST   WE  FIGHT   JAPAN? 

MUST  we  fight  Japan? 
Many  Americans  will  laugh  at  this  question. 
The  world  has  had  enough  of  war,  they  say.  After  hav 
ing  watched  Europe  go  down  into  ruin,  most  of  us  are 
now  vividly  aware  of  the  folly  of  trying  to  settle  any 
national  quarrels  by  the  caveman  method,  so  they  tell 
us.  Furthermore,  Japan  and  the  United  States  are  too 
far  apart  ever  to  be  drawn  into  battle. 

But  there  are  other  Americans,  and  not  a  few  of  them, 
who  insist  that  our  query  is  ridiculous  for  the  opposite 
reason.  There  is  only  one  real  problem,  they  tell  us, 
and  that  is:  How  soon  shall  we  be  fighting  Japan,  and 
how  shall  we  manage  it  so  as  to  win?  These  people, 
mostly  living  on  our  Pacific  Coast,  argue  that  war  has 
already  become  inevitable.  And  they  are  not  at  a  loss 
when  asked  to  advance  their  reasons  for  their  belief. 
They  point  to  half  a  hundred  momentous  political  and 
commercial  events,  here  and  abroad,  concerning  all  of 
which  we  shall  have  much  to  say  later ;  and,  on  the  whole, 
their  evidence  is  much  more  circumstantial  and  smacks 

3 


4      :      ^  :      MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN  ? 

less  of  theories  and  wishes  than  does  the  evidence  of  those 
who  take  the  view  that  war  is  impossible. 

The  very  existence  of  two  such  sharply  opposed  views 
suggests  that  both  are  wrong  and  that  our  question  is 
an  open  one.  And  a  careful  examination  of  the  facts 
fully  confirms  this  supposition.  War  with  Japan  is  a 
possibility,  not  a  certainty  to-day.  Peace  with  Japan 
is  a  possibility,  not  a  certainty  to-day.  It  is  a  demonstra 
ble  fact  that 

I  There  are  many  more  powerful  forces  making  for  war 
between  Japan  and  the  United  States  to-day  than  there 
were  for  making  war  between  Germany  and  the  United 
States  only  ten  years  ago. 

And  it  is  no  less  demonstrable  that 

There  are  some  powerful  forces  working  to  prevent 
such  a  war  which  were  not  working  to  prevent  the  war 
between  Germany  and  the  United  States. 

The  chances  of  grave  trouble  with  Japan  in  the  near 
future  are  immensely  greater  than  our  chances  of 
trouble  with  Germany  were  ten  years  ago.  This  is  a 
most  conservative  statement  that  could,  if  we  had 
time  for  such  a  task,  be  proved  in  detail.  Whoever 
doubts  it  is  asked  to  contemplate  the  following  facts : 

In  1910,  Germany  was  expanding  into  southeastern 
Europe  politically  and  economically,  and  this  expansion 
was  not  coming  into  conflict  with  a  single  visible  interest 
of  the  United  States. 

y^In  1920,  Japan  is  expanding  in  eastern  Asia,  Hawaii, 

/and  our  own  Pacific  Coast.     Her  interests  in  Siberia 

conflict   sharply  with  American   international  policies. 


MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN?  5 

Her  demand  for  control  of  the  German  cable  station  on 
the  island  of  Yap  and  the  granting  of  her  wish  by  the 
League  of  Nations  have  disturbed  our  State  Department 
so  deeply  that  the  delicate  controversy  has  been  laid  be 
fore  the  Foreign  Relations  Committee  of  the  Senate ;  and 
it  is  not  unlikely  that  grave  complications  may  ensue. 
Her  aggression  in  China  conflicts  with  American  ship 
ping,  commercial,  and  diplomatic  interests,  with  Ameri 
can  moral  sentiment,  and  with  the  American  policy  of 
"The  Open  Door.'y^The  enormous  influx  of  Japanese 
into  Hawaii  has  already  made  those  islands  oriental  in 
every  sense  save  the  political  one,  and  within  another  dec 
ade  they  will  be  politically  dominated  by  the  Japanese 
vote.  The  lesser  immigration  into  California  has  brought 
about  a  grave  crisis,  the  latest  development  of  which  is 
the  overwhelming  referendum  vote  of  that  State  in  favor 
of  a  land  law  that  must  result,  if  consistently  carried  out, 
in  driving  thousands  of  Japanese  farmers  out  of  the  Pa 
cific  Coast  region.  For  rather  obvious  reasons  this  same 
discriminatory  legislation  has  produced  immense  irrita 
tion  in  Japan. 

In  1910,  thousands  of  Americans  admired  all  things 
German,  save  the  kaiser,  whom  few  took  half  seriously 
enough.  The  meaning  of  what  had  happened  in  Bosnia 
in  1908  had  not  dawned  upon  us  and  did  not  influence 
our  national  policies  visibly.  Our  newspapers  were  full 
of  stories  about  German  skill  in  industry  and  social  work. 
We  were  still  welcoming  German  dignitaries  to  our 
shores.  There  were  even  intelligent  men  who  pointed  to 
the  state  socialism  of  Germany  with  admiration  and  envy. 

In  1920,  all  Americans  who  have  given  the  matter  much 
thought,  look  witli  forebodings  upon  the  Government  and 


6  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

the  ruling  classes  of  Japan.  The  World  War  has  opened 
our  eyes  to  the  evils  of  feudalism,  no  matter  how  good  the 
motives  of  its  managers  may  be.  The  conviction  is  deep 
ening  that  the  world  cannot  exist  half  feudal  and  half 
free.  Wherever  this  thought  sinks  in,  there  it  creates 
profound  distrust  of  the  Japanese  Government  and  all 
its  policies.  Americans  do  not  like  to  associate  with  Jap 
anese  in  the  same  community;  and  they  are  coming  to 
fear  the  militaristic  aristocracy  of  that  race,  even  though 
it  be  on  the  other  side  of  the  earth. 

In  1910,  the  Government  and  the  people  of  Germany 
cherished  no  special  grudge  against  America.  While 
they  despised  us  as  a  nation  of  hucksters  and  mollycod 
dles,  it  was  a  faint  prejudice  that  seldom  developed  power 
enough  to  influence  their  acts.  And  there  were  thou 
sands  of  Germans  having  business  and  personal  connec 
tions  in  the  United  States  who  emphatically  liked  us  and 
our  ways. 

In  1920,  the  Government  and  the  people  of  Japan  dis 
like  us.  And  not  all  the  smooth  evasions  of  professional 
diplomats  can  conceal  this  feeling.  Too  few  Americans 
appreciate  its  power  and  extent.  It  has  four  sources  : 

1.  The  impression  about  Americans  and  their  morals 
which  is  systematically  created  by  newspapers  and  mo 
tion  pictures ;  % 

2.  The  part  America  has  played,  together  with  the 
powers  of  Europe,  in  forcing  itself,  its  business  men,  and 
its  trade  upon  Japan. 

3.  The  cunning  and  hypocritical  efforts  of  our  Govern- 
i    ment  in  thwarting  Japan  in  her  natural  expansion  on 

the  mainland  of  Asia,  whither  her  immense  surplus  popu 
lation  must  overflow  or  perish. 


MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN?  7 

4.  The  insulting  attitude  of  Americans  on  the  Pacific 
coast  in  treating  Japanese  as  an  inferior  race  and  passing 
harsh  laws  that  discriminate  against  them. 

We  cannot  see  the  Japanese  crisis  in  its  true  perspec 
tive  until  we  have  inspected  the  belief  and  prejudices 
that  have  been  steadily  flowing  from  these  four  sources. 


CHAPTER  2 
AS  JAPAN   SEES  US 

EVERY  American,  before  he  can  appraise  the  present 
crisis,  must  put  himself  in  the  place  of  a  Japanese 
and  see  the  situation  through  his  eyes  as  far  as  possible. 

Let  us  inquire  first  of  all  as  to  the  sources  of  the  ordi 
nary  Japanese  citizen's  information  and  impressions 
about  us.  You  will  doubtless  think  at  once  of  the  news 
despatches  published  in  the  Yokohama  and  Tokio  dailies, 
the  other  news  in  the  English-language  sheets  of  Japan, 
and  the  letters  from  Japanese  colonist  in  Hawaii  and  the 
Pacific  coast.  All  these  are  important  factors  in  deter 
mining  Japanese  opinion.  But,  in  truth,  to-day  they  are 
little  more  than  confirmatory  of  hypotheses  which  the 
'-Japanese  derive  from  another  source  so  much  more 
widely  known  in  the  islands,  so  vivid,  and  so  copious, 
that  every  other  channel  of  knowledge  has  become  petty 
in  comparison.  This  source  is  the  American  motion- 
;  picture. 

The  motion-picture  has,  from  all  that  I  can  gather 
from  both  natives  and  Americans  who  have  been  study 
ing  it  in  Japan,  China,  and  India,  done  more  to  blacken 
the  reputation  of  the  white  race  in  general  and  the  United 
States  in  particular  than  all  the  malice  and  libel  of  the 
most  savage  anti-American  propagandists.  The  "rising 
tide  of  color,"  which  Lothrop  Stoddard  has  recently  de- 

8 


AS  JAPAN  SEES  US  9 

scribed  so  picturesquely,  but  inaccurately,  does  not  flow 
from  native  irritation  over  politics  or  secret  diplomacy 
or  the  aggressions  of  economic  imperialism  in  any  greater 
volume  than  it  flows  from  the  inevitable  reactions  which 
the  ordinary  run  of  screen-picture  produces  upon  the  or 
dinary  Asiatic,  as  he  sits  in  the  shabby  theaters  of  the 
great  ports  and  contemplates  the  world  of  the  white  man 
as  reported  to  him  by  the  white  man  himself. 

The  pictures  he  sees  are,  as  a  rule,  not  those  recently 
produced  by  our  best  companies.  The  films  that  are  ex 
ported  to  Asia  and  South  America  are  largely  of  two 
classes.  Many  of  them  are  inferior  works  of  art  which 
have  not  succeeded  in  our  own  country,  and  have  there 
fore  been  dumped  on  the  helpless  heathen,  who  can  pay 
only  the  lowest  rentals  and  hence  ought  not  to  expect 
much.  These  are,  on  the  whole,  merely  the  cheap,  silly 
stuff  that  you  may  see  any  evening  when  you  can  endure 
sitting  for  an  hour  in  almost  any  fifteen  or  twenty  cent 
movie-dive.  The  Japanese  sees  exactly  what  you  see —  * 
murders,  robberies,  prostitutes  exhibiting  themselves  as 
heroines,  and  supposedly  sane  characters  saying  and  do 
ing  things  which  only  morons  or  drug  fiends  could  say 
or  do.  As  all  of  the  pictures  of  this  class  are  exactly 
alike  in  their  essential  plots,  stage  settings,  characters, 
and  general  imbecilities,  and  as  the  Japanese  observer 
sees  them  month  in  and  month  out,  he  is  forced  into  the 
habit  of  believing  that  all  this  is  American  realism.  In 
this  he  does  exactly  what  you  do  when  you  see  a  motion- 
picture  with  scenes  laid  in  India  or  Japan. 

The  second  class  of  pictures  he  sees  is  quite  different. 
You  have  never  seen  them,  and  probably  you  never  will 
unless  you  happen  to  sit  on  a  board  of  censors.  They 


10  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

are  the  films  which  the  censors  bar  from  the  American 
screen.  Most  of  them  are  old,  for  not  many  producers 
are  to-day  attempting  such  filth.  They  have  learned 
that  it  pays  to  show  a  chemical  trace  of  decency  even  in 
the  movies.  But'  they  cannot  refrain  from  cashing  in  on 
past  mistakes.  So  they  keep  on  circuit  in  Asia  and 
South  America  (and,  so  I  am  told,  Mexico)  the  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  feet  of  tainted  celluloid  that  five,  ten,  or 
even  more  years  ago  was  adjudged  too  nasty  for  even  a 
Barbary  Coast  audience  in  San  Francisco.  The  mildest 
description  of  these  films  is  unfit  to  print.  Yet  mission 
aries  and  business  men  both  testify  that  they  are  being 
shown  regularly  in  all  the  larger  cities  of  Asia,  and  a 
high  official  of  the  Government  of  India  personally  told 
me  that  the  effect  of  these  loathsome  displays  on  the 
natives  of  that  country  was  so  evil  that  plans  for  a  severe 
censorship  were  being  considered,  especially  against  what 
Asia  knows  as  the  American  film. 

Now,  here  is  no  place  to  discuss  what  America  ought 
to  do  by  way  of  protecting  our  already  tarnished  name 
against  the  degenerates  who  write,  act,  and  finance  such 
pictures.  Enough  to  know  that  for  every  one  Asiatic 
who  learns  something  about  the  United  States  from  news 
papers  or  letters  a  thousand  learn  everything  about  us 
from  these  movies.  It  matters  little  that  there  is  a 
sprinkling  of  decent  and  even  solidly  informative  pic 
tures  in  the  stream  of  exhibits.  The  significant  fact  is 
that  the  ' '  run  of  the  mill "  is  as  above  described,  and  it 
is  just  this  that  shapes  men 's  ideas. 

An  American,  beholding  the  lurid  lunacy  of  a  cheap 
movie,  is  seldom  disturbed  by  it.  He  knows  that  there 
aren  't  any  such  animals  as  the  screen  depicts  in  the  guise 


AS  JAPAN  SEES  US  11 

of  Yankee  heroes  and  villains.  He  simply  does  n't  meet 
them  on  the  street.^But  the  Japanes  is  less  fortunate. 
He  has  n  't  been  around  America,  and  he  has  no  friends 
here.  The  only  way  he  can  check  up  on  the  motion- 
picture  is  by  reading  about  America.  The  two  most  ac 
cessible  sources  of  printed  information  are  the  Japanese 
newspapers  and  the  few  English-language  publications 
in  Japan.  The  well-to-do  and  highly  educated  Japanese 
is  likely  to  read  more  or  less  regularly  some  American 
newspaper  also. 

Now,  it  is  a  well-known  fact  among  newspaper  men 
that  only  the  most  sensational  news  is  cabled  from  any 
one  country  to  any  other.  This  is  an  evil  state  of  affairs, 
and  one  of  the  most  potent  causes  of  international  mis 
understandings.  Some  day  it  will  be  remedied,  but  now 
it  is  still  unaltered  so  far  as  America  and  Asia  are  con 
cerned.  And  the  result  is  that  the  run  of  news  from 
America  about  America  confirms  the  motion-picture  im-| 
pressions  of  America  upon  the  Japanese  mind.  And  so 
too,  in  great  measure,  do  the  head-lines  of  even  our  own 
more  respectable  newspapers.  Let  us  glance  briefly  at 
these  last.  Let  us  see  just  what  the  Japanese  are  hear 
ing  about  us  now  through  our  own  best  periodicals.  Let 
us  observe,  in  the  middle  of  December,  1920,  "all  the 
news  that  's  fit  to  print/' 

The  New  York  building  investigation  is  featured  on 
the  front  page,  abounding  in  murky  revelations  of  graft 
— money  taken  from  contractors  by  labor  bosses,  who  in 
turn  squeeze  a  toll  from  the  workmen.  Organized  es 
pionage  carried  on  by  the  steel  interest  is  mentioned, 
with  the  suggestion  of  spies  and  counterspies.  At  the 
very  trial  itself,  men  are  removed  from  the  court-room, 


12  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

accused  of  coaching  witnesses.  All  this  leaves  a  general 
impression  of  moral  depravity. 

A  police  lieutenant,  also  on  the  same  day,  was  shot  by 
burglars  when  he  attempted  to  interfere  with  their  plans. 
In  the  ball-room  of  the  Hotel  Astor  on  this  same  day  a 
dinner  of  the  Japan  Society  was  taking  place,  with  its 
protestations  of  friendship  between  two  friendly  nations. 
At  that  very  hour  a  daring  robbery  was  taking  place 
only  several  floors  above  the  festivities.  Three  bandits, 
with  disconcerting  boldness,  walked  into  one  of  the  rooms 
and  attempted  a  hold-up.  Two  of  the  men  escaped. 

Further  reading  in  our  press  does  not  tend  to  prove 
our  right  to  send  missionaries  into  the  East  to  bring 
civilization  to  barbarism.  Detroit  has  a  toll  of  twenty- 
four  murders  in  one  year.  Gunmen  in  speeding  auto 
mobiles  slay  and  steal  there,  for  vengeance  and  profit, 
and  go  unpunished.  Chicago  confesses  to  sixty-eight  un 
solved  homicides  in  this  same  year.  A  normal  day  in 
that  progressive  city  has  to  its  credit  thirty-two  rob 
beries  and  burglaries  by  violence.  Philadelphia,  the 
City  of  Brotherly  Love,  has  to  its  credit  one  hundred 
murders  in  eleven  months.  Fifty  holdups  occurred  in 
one  day.  Cleveland  has  seventy  murders  on  its  records 
in  one  year. 

In  the  New  York  papers  for  December  17,  1920,  we 
find  accounts  of  a  bandit  killing  a  jeweler  on  Fifth  Ave 
nue.  The  robber  easily  escaped  with  the  jewels,  and  this 
happened  at  twenty  minutes  after  two  in  the  afternoon. 
All  of  which  prompts  an  editor  to  remark  soberly : 

"Readers  of  yesterday's  'Times'  had  the  happiness  of  know 
ing  that  Tuesday  was  a  perfectly  normal  day,  with  the  nor 
mal  amount  of  energy  on  the  part  of  the  violent  annexers  of 


AS  JAPAN  SEES  US  IS 

other  people's  property.  Only  five  daylight  robberies  were 
reported.  The  returns  were  only  normally  satisfactory,  some 
thing  more  than  $50,000.  The  normal  citizen  must  have  felt 
satisfied  that  the  average  of  crime  was  not  rising." 

But  the  worst  is  still  to  come.  Our  Japanese  observer, 
if  extremely  charitable,  might  explain  and  excuse  this 
national  viciousness  in  a  number  of  ways.  But  he  would 
probably  stop  his  apology  when  he  discovered  that  we 
not  only  fail  to  suppress  crimes,  but,  when  crimes  are 
committed,  almost  never  run  down  the  criminals  and 
bring  them  to  justice.  The  official  figures  on  crimes,  ar 
rests,  and  convictions  have  been  minutely  studied  by 
many  experts,  and  they  all  demonstrate  that  in  the 
United  States  murder  has  always  been  one  of  the  safest 
of  professions.  A  murderer  runs  much  less  risk  of  land 
ing  in  the  electric  chair  than  a  glass-blower  runs  of  land 
ing  in  a  sanatorium  or  a  leather-worker  of  dying  of  an 
thrax.  Measured  alongside  the  police  systems  of  Europe 
and  Japan,  ours  is  a  ghastly  jest.  "We  simply  do  not 
know  what  scientific  and  efficient  policing  is.  In  this 
we  stand  imperceptibly  above  the  Balkan  States,  as  Ray 
mond  Fosdick's  recent  studies  show. 

Our  burglars  loot  eight  times  as  many  homes  and  shops 
as  backward  Great  Britain's  burglars  do.  Our  murder 
ers  slay  twice  as  many  victims  as  Great  Britain's  manage 
to  slay.  Our  robbers  and  highwaymen  are  from  three  to 
five  times  as  skilful  and  as  busy.  Our  insurance  sta 
tisticians,  analyzing  the  cold  facts  revealed  on  our  po 
lice  blotters,  declare,  as  the  " Spectator"  has  of  late: 
"Human  life  was  never  so  insecure  in  the  United 
States  as  it  is  today,  and  our  national  apathy  toward 
this  insecurity  is  an  indictment  of  our  alleged  civiliza- 


14  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tion."  To  which  we  may  add  the  all  too  true  words  of 
the  Chicago  "Tribune,"  which  remarks,  "There  is  prob 
ably  more  undisciplined,  egotistic,  mischievous  force  in 
the  United  States  to-day  than  in  any  other  country  of 
first  rank  in  the  world. ' ' 

Our  general  disregard  for  the  law  is  nowhere  shown 
more  clearly  than  in  the  attitude  of  our  foremost  citizens 
toward  prohibition.  It  must  impress  a  foreigner  that 
our  main  topic  of  conversation  turns  on  ways  to  procure 
or  manufacture  liquor  illegally.  The  boast  of  a  New 
York  clubman  that  he  knows  fifty  places  in  New  York 
where  he  can  get  anything  from  a  cocktail  to  a  gin-fizz 
is  only  too  often  heard.  The  most  charming  of  well- 
dressed  society  women  will  give  an  excellent  recipe 
for  apple-jack,  that  most  potent  of  intoxicants,  for  the 
asking.  Unscrupulous  dealers  have  taken  dire  advantage 
of  this  eagerness  for  forbidden  fruits,  and  again  the  pa 
pers  come  in  beating  the  drums  of  tragedy:  two  men 
killed  from  drinking  wood  alcohol  illegally  sold  in  a 
New  York  hotel,  a  woman  dying  from  drinking  wood  al 
cohol.  The  death-toll  lengthens  to  weariness. 

A  paper  with  a  weakness  for  statistics  announces  an 
average  of  seven  decrees  of  divorce  daily  in  Seattle.  We 
read  of  suits  for  alienation  of  affections.  A  common-law 

wife  sues  the  second  Mrs.  S. for  a  considerable  sum 

of  money,  showing  her  willingness  to  parade  her  moral 
status  in  return  for  gain.  We  notice  that  a  woman  has 
been  indicted  by  a  grand  jury  for  procuring  and  sell 
ing  two  girls  for  immoral  purposes,  and  the  testimony 
reveals  a  shocking  recital  of  the  traffic  in  women.  A  man 
of  sixty,  respected  in  his  community,  married  for  many 


AS  JAPAN  SEES  US  15 

years,  advertises  for  a  typist;  but  the  advertisement 
proves  to  be  a  trap. 

Every  day  adds  to  the  long  roll  of  deaths  from  motor 
accidents,  most  of  them  due  to  carelessness  and  indiffer 
ence  to  human  life.  In  one  day  five  such  tragedies  oc 
curred.  An  aged  couple  was  run  down  by  a  limousine, 
but  the  automobile  continued  on  its  way.  The  driver  did 
not  even  look  back  to  see  how  badly  his  victims  were  in 
jured.  The  old  couple  died,  but  the  driver  has  not  been 
apprehended. 

In  this  year  of  business  uncertainties  the  charities  are 
the  first  expenditures  to  be  curtailed.  Our  love  for  our 
fellow-man  is  amply  measured  by  the  failure  of  hospital 
drives  for  funds,  and  collections  for  Christmas  distribu 
tions  to  the  suffering  poor  are  pitifully  meager.  All 
this  is  reported  in  the  press,  and  one  paper  comments  on 
this  selfishness,  in  the  light  of  the  receipts  of  $137,000 
taken  from  the  public  in  one  evening  for  admission  to  a 
prize-fight  in  New  York  City.  Those  who  could  not  get 
into  the  building  because  of  lack  of  space  hung  about  the 
outside,  breathless,  waiting.  An  outsider,  seeing  that 
eager,  excited  crowd,  could  not  fail  but  comment  on  our 
adoration  of  the  thug. 

Our  high  standards  of  patriotism  are  unfortunately 
computed  in  terms  to  coincide  with  the  public  revelations 
of  graft  in  the  shipping  board,  in  the  air-craft  commis 
sion,  and  in  government  sales,  all  of  which  show  a  desire 
to  cheat  and  steal  and  profiteer  for  individual  gain  and 
patronage. 

Our  professions  of  liberalism  are  not  strengthened  by 
the  publication  of  such  papers  as  *  *  The  Menace, ' '  which 


16  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

is  devoted  to  the  declaration  that  all  Catholics  are  foul 
conspirators  against  civilization.  Nor  are  those  profes 
sions  strengthened  by  Henry  Ford's  widely  read  weekly, 
which  revels  in  anti-Semitic  propaganda. 

As  for  the  honesty  of  our  internationalists  and  labor 
leaders  who  profess  to  be  yearning  for  the  "brotherhood 
of  man,"  an  able  and  frank  Japanese  has  told  us  how 
their  behavior  impresses  his  countrymen.  Mr.  K.  K. 
Kawakami,  in  his  recent  volume  on  "Japan  and  World 
Peace,"  remarks: 

"Even  Westerners  and  Western  organizations  professing  to 
advocate  internationalism  have  been  incapable  of  redeeming 
themselves  from  the  traditional  attitude  of  anti-liberalism  to 
wards  the  East.  This  is  best  illustrated  by  the  attitude  of 
Socialists  and  labor  unionists  in  Europe  and  America.  The 
Allied  Labor  Conference  held  at  Leeds  in  July,  1916,  adopted 
a  program  guaranteeing  to  the  working  people  of  all  coun 
tries  'freedom  to  work  in  any  country  where  employment  is 
available  under  equal  conditions  with  its  citizens.'  To  the 
International  Labor  Conference  now  being  held  in  Paris, 
American  labor  has  submitted  a  program  containing  the  pro 
vision  that  'no  political  or  economic  restrictions  meant  to 
benefit  some  nations  and  to  cripple  or  embarrass  others'  shall 
be  adopted  by  any  country. 

"Did  the  labor  leaders  of  Europe  and  America,  in  adopting 
such  provisions,  have  in  mind  the  working  classes  in  the  Ori 
ent,  as  well  as  their  fellows  in  the  Occident?  If  they  did, 
their  acts  certainly  have  not  conformed  with  their  principles. 
When  Socialists  in  Europe  and  America,  forgetting  that  across 
the  oceans  teeming  millions  are  crying  for  larger  fields  of  ac 
tivity,  pledge  themselves  to  internationalism,  they  are  think 
ing  only  of  Europe  and  America.  When  the  trade  unionists 
of  Europe  and  America  speak  of  the  brotherhood  of  workers, 


AS  JAPAN  SEES  US  17 

they  are  thinking  only  of  their  own  race.  They  complain  that 
Japanese  working  men  work  for  low  wages,  ignoring  that,  if 
the  teeming  masses  of  England  and  America  were  bottled  up 
in  a  small  archipelago  as  are  the  Japanese,  their  wage  scale 
would  not  have  risen  as  rapidly  as  it  has.  The  pacifists  of 
Europe  and  America  advocate  world  peace  by  sustaining  the 
status  quo  of  the  relations  of  the  East  and  West — by  permit 
ting  the  West  not  only  to  continue  its  occupation,  in  all  parts 
of  the  world,  of  more  territory  than  it  is  justly  entitled  to 
possess,  but  also  to  exclude  from  such  territories  all  dark- 
skinned  races  whos;  overcrowded  home  lands  afford  not  only 
scant  opportunity  to  their  natives,  but  are  themselves  often 
subject  to  ruthless  exploitation  at  the  hands  of  the  West.  A 
Western  nation  may  declare  a  Monroe  Doctrine,  but  is  reluct 
ant  to  accord  an  Asiatic  nation  a  similar  privilege.  The  West 
expects  the  East  to  open  its  doors  to  the  enterprises  and  even 
exploitation  of  the  white  race,  but  reserves  the  right  to  slam 
its  own  doors  in  the  face  of  the  East." 

<  It  must  be  all  but  impossible  for  an  intelligent  Japa 
nese  to  refrain  from  believing  that  our  Federal  Govern 
ment  is  as  bad  as  our  city  governments.  He  must  con 
clude  from  the  day's  news  that  the  most  vicious,  an 
tiquated  economic  imperialism  of  the  Mark  Hanna-Mc- 
Kinley  brand  is  now  dominating  American  policy.  He 
reads  that  the  current  estimates  for  the  United  States 
Army  and  Navy  reach  the  revolting  figure  of  $1,500,000,- 
000.  He  hears  Mr.  Harding  tell  newspaper  reporters 
that  it  is  a  Government's  highest  duty  to  aid  business 
and  that  he  stands  for  a  big  navy.  He  observes  that  our 
War  Department  has  lately  increased  its  permanent  gar 
rison  in  Hawaii  to  twenty  thousand  regulars,  and  that 
our  Navy  Department  now  openly  readjusts  its  distri 
bution  of  ships  and  supply  bases  so  that  the  Pacific  be- 


18  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

comes  of  equal  strategic  importance  with  the  Atlantic. 
And  he  smiles  a  knowing  smile  as  he  contemplates  the 
suave  indifference,  not  to  say  deafness,  of  most  prominent 
Republicans  toward  the  demands  of  the  Philippine  Na 
tionalists  that  the  United  States  fulfil  its  solemn  promise 
to  give  their  islands  independence. 

Take  the  Japanese  point  of  view  as  far  as  you  can. 
Then  you  will  have  to  agree  with  Viscount  Ishii,  when  he 
notified  Commission  No.  6,  on  International  Disarma 
ment,  of  the  League  of  Nations  that  Japan  cannot  con 
sider  reducing  her  military  forces  so  long  as  the  United 
States  persists  in  her  present  policy.  No  sane  Japanese 
could  take  any  other  position,  particularly  in  view  of  the 
extent  to  which  anti-Japanese  agitation  has  spread  in  the 
United  States.  And  we  can  scarcely  censure  him  for 
construing  our  past  relations  with  Japan  as  one  of  his 
noted  editors  does  in  the  following  staggering  indictment, 
that  appeared  on  November  12,  1919,  in  the  Osaka 
"Mainichi,"  which  is  one  of  Japan's  most  influential 
newspapers : 

"History  shows,  however,  that  America's  attitude  toward 
Japan  has  been  aggressive,  insulting  and  coercive  throughout. 

"(1)  When  Commodore  Perry  visited  Japan,  we  benevolently 
interpreted  his  visit  as  an  attempt  to  open  our  door  to  the 
world.  But  the  fact  that  there  were  no  serious  developments 
between  the  two  countries  was  due  to  the  change  in  adminis 
tration,  the  policy  of  the  new  President  being  different  from 
that  of  his  predecessor.  The  total  intention  of  Perry's  fleet 
was  to  threaten  us  and  to  take  the  Okinawa  Islands  by  force 
in  order  to  coerce  this  country  if  we  did  not  obey  his  orders. 

"(2)  America  assisted  the  independence  plot  in  Hawaii,  and 
used  it  to  realize  the  annexation  of  the  islands  by  America. 
It  may  be  said  that  this  action  on  the  part  of  America  em- 


AS  JAPAN  SEES  US  19 

bodied  the  spirit  in  which  America  threatened  to  take  the 
Okinawa  Islands. 

"(3)  In  obtaining  Guam  and  the  Philippines  in  the  American- 
Spanish  War,  America  secured  another  stepping-stone  for  de 
velopment  in  the  Pacific  and  also  laid  the  foundation  of  her 
activities  in  China.  On  the  other  hand,  this  state  of  affairs 
was  calculated  to  obstruct  the  southern  affairs  of  Japan  and 
to  impair  her  relations  with  China.  In  other  words  to  hinder 
Japan's  activities  on  the  east,  west,  and  south.  At  that  time, 
Japanese-American  relations  were  not  so  strained  as  yet. 
Moreover,  the  Gentlemen's  Agreement  and  the  Pacific  Agree 
ment  have  served  to  some  extent  as  palliatives. 

"(4)  Since  the  school  children's  question  arose  in  California, 
however,  America  has  openly  projected  anti-Japanese  plans. 

"(5)  When  subsequently  the  California  Legislature  proposed 
to  undermine  the  foundations  of  Japanese  development  in 
California  by  enacting  a  new  land  law,  the  Japanese  could  but 
rise  in  indignation,  and  at  that  time  Japanese-American  di 
plomacy  assumed  a  profound  significance.  The  spirit  of 
friendship  toward  America,  however,  kept  the  Japanese  from 
making  up  their  minds  to  take  drastic  action.  While  the  issue 
was  left  undecided,  California  actually  attained  her  object, 
though  the  question  was  nominally  left  pending.  The  Amer 
icans  are  elated,  but  every  Japanese  is  indignant  at  a  procedure 
which  ignored  the  constitutions  of  California  and  of  the 
United  States,  set  at  naught  treaty  obligations  and  trampled 
under  foot  the  laws  of  humanity. 

"America  took  further  steps  to  oppress  Japan.  America  has 
tried  (6)  to  alienate  China  from  Japan  in  connection  with  the 
question  of  China's  participation  in  the  European  War;  (7) 
to  oust  Japan  from  investments  in  China,  and  to  obtain  cap 
italistic  control  of  China;  (8)  to  harass  Japan  at  the  Peace 
Conference,  to  prevent  Japan  from  possessing  the  former  Ger 
man  Islands  in  the  South  Pacific  by  proposing  mandatory 
rules,  and  to  violate  the  Sino-Japanese  Agreement  and  Japan's 


20  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

understanding  with  Great  Britain  and  France  regarding  the 
disposal  of  Shantung;  (9)  to  restrain  Japan's  movements  with 
regard  to  the  dispatch  of  troops  to  Siberia  or  to  estrange  the 
relations  between  Japan  and  Russia;  (10)  to  threaten  Japan 
by  greatly  increasing  the  strength  of  the  Pacific  squadron; 
(11)  to  assist  the  independence  agitation  in  Korea  and  (12) 
the  anti- Japanese  boycott  in  China.  (13)  America  has  abused 
and  insulted  Japan  in  the  course  of  debate  on  the  Peace  Treaty 
with  Germany.  (14)  With  regard  to  the  International  Labor 
Conference,  Mr.  Sherman  made  remarks  exceedingly  insulting 
to  Japan.  It  seems  as  if  America  desires  to  arouse  Japan's 
indignation  in  order  to  make  war.  (15)  In  the  meantime, 
a  new  immigration  bill  has  often  been  proposed  in  the  Fed 
eral  Legislature  for  anti- Japanese  purposes,  while  (16)  the 
anti-Japanese  Californians  are  striving  fundamentally  to  ex 
clude  Japanese. 

"The  anti- Japanese  campaign  of  America  is  not  confined  to 
California  or  to  the  Republicans  or  Progressives  alone;  it 
seems  that  the  movement  is  supported  throughout  the  country 
and  even  by  the  Democrats.  It  is  no  wonder  that  some  Sen 
ator  who  opposed  the  Shantung  amendment  said,  in  explaining 
his  reason  for  the  opposition,  that  Japan's  development  in 
Shantung  was  preferable  to  that  in  America." 

In  the  early  autumn  of  1920,  as  the  time  approached 
for  California  to  vote  on  the  law  prohibiting  Japanese 
land  leasing,  the  Japanese  cabinet  resolved  to  push  diplo 
matic  negotiations  against  such  an  enactment.  It  was 
reported  in  Tokio  that  the  Government  intended  to  force 
the  issue  of  race  equality  upon  the  League  of  Nations 
conference.  In  the  last  week  of  September,  Marquis 
Okuma,  the  former  premier,  called  a  meeting  of  one  hun 
dred  prominent  diplomats,  business  men,  and  publicists, 
for  the  purpose  of  organizing  a  publicity  campaign  in 


AS  JAPAN  SEES  US  21 

Japan  "against  the  unlawful  attitude  of  California 
Americans."  To  the  Associated  Press  correspondent 
Okuma  stated  that  the  approaching  world  Sunday  School 
convention  at  Tokio  afforded  a  fine  opportunity  for  a 
demonstration,  inasmuch  as  it  would  be  attended  by  many 
Americans  who  advocated  justice  and  humanity  in  the 
settling  of  all  affairs.  At  about  the  same  time  Repre 
sentative  Kodama  forecast  war  between  his  nation  and 
the  United  States  in  a  meeting  that  the  police  broke  up. 
And  the  former  foreign  minister,  Viscount  Takahira 
Kato,  declared: 

"That  America,  which  constantly  is  advocating  the  cause  of 
righteousness  and  humanity,  should  dare,  without  giving 
proper  reasons,  to  deprive  Japanese  of  the  fruits  of  many 
painstaking  labors  is  an  act  which  we  can  never  overlook. 
That  America,  of  all  countries,  should  resort  to  an  act  so 
cruel  and  inhuman  is  really  inexplicable." 

When  intelligent  and  sober  diplomats  speak  thus,  it  is 
not  surprising  that  sensational  newspapers,  such  as  the 
"Yorodzu,"  burst  forth  with  such  fury  as  this: 

"Whatever  may  be  their  object,  their  actions  are  more  de 
spicable  than  those  of  the  Germans  whose  atrocities  they  at 
tacked  as  worthy  of  the  Huns.  At  least,  these  Americans  are 
barbarians  who  are  on  a  lower  plane  of  civilization  than  the 
Japanese." 

Since  California  passed  the  drastic  land  measure  in 
referendum  last  November,  by  a  vote  of  more  than  three 
to  one,  the  outbursts  in  Japan  have  naturally  increased 
in  number,  though  it  must  be  said  that  the  Government 
has  shown  much  skill  and  tact  in  controlling  the  more  vio 
lent  protestants.  Buddhist  mobs  have  attacked  Japanese 


22  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Christians  here  and  there.  Students  have  openly  de 
bated  the  question:  "Shall  We  Declare  War  on  The 
United  States?"  And  the  Government  filed  diplomatic 
protests  with  our  State  Department,  which,  at  the  date  of 
this  writing,  claims  to  be  engaged  in  drawing  up  a  new 
"Gentlemen's  Agreement"  to  placate  Tokio  —  a  venture 
which,  as  will  later  appear,  is  doomed  to  abject  failure 
or  else  to  catastrophe  in  view  of  California's  absolute  re 
fusal  to  consider  granting  full  civic  rights  to  Japanese 
already  within  our  country. 

Does  not  all  this  prove  that  the  sources  of  trouble  be 
tween  Japan  and  ourselves  to-day  are  vastly  graver  than 
any  which  existed  between  Germany  and  America  ten 
years  ago? 


CHAPTER  3 
FORCES   THAT   MAKE  FOR  PEACE 

AGAINST  such  disturbing  influences,  there  are  a  few 
which  happily  make  for  peace.  Unhappily,  how 
ever,  it  is  human  nature  to  exaggerate  their  power,  and 
it  is  very  difficult  to  prove  that  they  are  at  all  effective  in 
political  practice.  We  may  name  four  of  these  forces,  by 
way  of  illustration.  Certainly  the  most  conspicuous  one, 
so  far  as  the  United  States  is  concerned,,  is  the  wide 
spread  disgust  and  disillusionment  as  to  the  value  of  war 
as  a  method  of  getting  results.  Almost  every  American 
to-day  realizes,  sometimes  bitterly,  that  the  cost  of  the 
World  War  was  out  of  all  proportion  to  any  possible  or 
actual  benefits  accruing  from  the  conflict.  Two  years 
ago  this  statement  would  have  been  treason ;  to-day  it  is 
an  axiom.  A  second  influence  is  the  rapidly  growing  sol 
idarity  of  the  intellectual  classes  of  the  world  and  their 
concerted  efforts  to  anticipate  international  crises  and 
block  them  by  honest  and  open  debate  and  publicity.  In 
this  movement  the  intellectuals  of  Japan  are  playing  a 
worthy  part,  at  times  under  handicaps  little  realized  by 
us.  A  third  influence  is  the  shaky  financial  condition  of 
the  whole  world,  and  of  Japan  in  particular,  which  op 
erates  to  array  all  international  bankers  solidly  against 
every  political  movement  that  threatens,  even  remotely, 
to  carry  any  country  into  war.  A  fourth  influence  is 
the  economic  dependence  of  Japan's  new  industrial  sys- 

23 


24  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tern  upon  the  United  States  far  most  of  its  raw  materials 
and  special  machinery. 

The  scope  and  the  power  of  these  four  influences  are 
changing  rapidly,  so  that  it  is  peculiarly  difficult  to  make 
dogmatic  assertions  about  them.  But  at  the  present  time 
it  seems  safe  to  declare  that  the  reaction  against  war 
throughout  the  rank  and  file  of  Americans  is  so  tremen 
dous  that  nothing  short  of  a  plainly  vicious  assault  upon 
our  own  land  would  provoke  us  to  give  battle.  How  long 
this  sentiment  will  continue  without  abatement  cannot 
be  predicted,  but  at  the  most  conservative  estimate  we 
may  hazard  that  for  at  least  the  next  ten  years  the  United 
States  will  not  be  dragged  into  anything  save  the  most 
obvious  defensive  war,  unless  the  public  is  tricked  by  poli 
ticians  or  propaganda.  How  great  the  peril  of  such 
trickery  may  be,  nobody  knows.  But  we  do  know  that 
whole  nations  can  be  all  too  easily  hoodwinked  and  misled 
in  the  way  of  war.  How  imminent  an  attack  upon  us  is 
can  be  estimated  much  more  readily;  for  the  next  few 
years,  say  ten  at  the  very  least,  not  a  nation  or  a  conceiv 
able  coalition  of  nations  is  going  to  contemplate  landing 
forces  on  our  shores  or  even  appropriating  our  remoter 
territory.  Our  military  and  economic  power  is  too  over 
whelming. 

As  for  the  good  that  the  intellectual  classes  of  the 
world  can  do  in  forestalling  war,  the  best  of  estimates 
here  must  be  a  wild  guess  in  which  wish  and  fact  prob 
ably  mingle  indistinguishably.  True,  the  activities  of 
the  great  peace  organizations,  which  were  interrupted  by 
the  World  War,  are  now  resuming  vigorously.  The 
labor  unions  of  our  own  country  are  being  followed,  to 
some  slight  degree,  by  the  Japanese  workers  in  their  or- 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  PEACE  25 

ganized  efforts  for  peace.  And  shortly  after  California 
passed  her  latest  anti-Japanese  land  law,  the  leaders  of 
various  religious  societies  joined  with  prominent  political 
workers  in  Japan  for  the  purpose  of  reaching  an  ami 
cable  understanding  with  our  own  country.  So  there  are 
hopes  of  better  times.  Nevertheless  we  must  bear  in 
mind  that  the  intellectual  classes  of  Japan  are  still  labor 
ing  under  peculiar  restraints  from  their  own  Government, 
very  much  as  the  professors  and  scientists  of  old  Prussia 
were.  And  we  must  not  forget  that,  in  the  shaping  of 
national  policies,  both  Japan  and  the  United  States  are 
still  altogether  too  much  at  the  mercy  of  schemers  and 
underground  workers  and  gentlemen  adventurers.  And 
it  is  the  economic  pressure  in  the  present  situation  which, 
as  we  shall  show  later,  will  count  most  in  shaping  the 
course  of  events. 

The  parlous  state  of  world  finances  is,  at  present,  a 
tremendous  insurance  against  war.  Europe,  as  every 
body  knows  but  few  like  to  say,  is  insolvent  from  Bor 
deaux  to  the  Urals.  The  prospect  that  the  United  States 
will  ever  collect  more  than  ten  cents  on  the  dollar  of 
all  the  billions  we  have  advanced  to  the  one-time  Allies 
is  as  faint  as  the  odor  of  sanctity.  "We  may  count  our 
selves  lucky  if  we  cash  in  on  the  municipal,  commercial 
and  other  private  loans,  which  now  total  more  than  three 
billions.  It  is  no  cheap  jest  to  say  that  Europe,  so  far 
as  she  is  living  at  all,  is  now  existing  on  the  interest  of 
her  debts. 

How  this  is  undermining  the  whole  structure  of  life 
and  business  is  only  too  familiar.  In  the  closing  days  of 
1920  a  conservative  correspondent  describes  the  crisis  in 
these  gray  phrases : 


26  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

"From  every  part  of  Europe,  from  old  countries  and  new, 
and  even  from  Asia,  reports  arrive  of  unrest  and  disturbance, 
of  commercial  crisis,  unemployment  and  inability  to  sell  prod 
ucts,  together  with  the  greatest  need  of  those  products. 

"Food  supplies  are  far  smaller  than  before  the  war — indeed 
far  too  small  for  the  world's  needs,  even  though  the  United 
States  may  lack  for  nothing  and  though  large  stocks  are  ac 
cumulating  in  many  countries  for  want  of  buyers.  Thus  large 
manufacturers  and  wholesale  merchants  who  have  immense 
supplies  produced  or  bought  at  a  time  when  very  high  prices 
still  prevailed,  are  being  obliged  to  liquidate  at  very  heavy 
loss. 

"Already  failures  for  considerable  sums  are  occurring,  and 
economists  and  financiers  acquainted  with  the  state  of  Europe 
seem  to  have  made  up  their  minds  to  face  a  commercial 
crash,  complicated  in  certain  countries  with  revolution.  The 
question  now  pre-oecupying  them  is  how  to  minimize  the 
gravity  of  this  crash.  No  one  denies  that  a  crash  is  inevit 
able  :  the  only  question  is  how  to  lessen  its  seriousness." 

The  whole  world  is  groaning  under  a  burden  of  taxes 
and  business  losses  from  which  no  man  sees  an  early 
escape.  When  they  are  graybeards,  babes  now  in  arms 
will  certainly  be  paying  heavily  for  the  madness  of  1914. 
In  the  United  States  people  react  with  particular  ill 
feeling  to  such  penalties,  largely  because  most  Ameri 
cans,  despite  all  attempts  at  popular  education  in  inter 
national  affairs,  still  do  not  appreciate  the  benefits  of  the 
money  spent  in  defeating  Germany.  The  European 
understands  what  lie  got  for  his  money  and  can  there 
fore  endure  the  bills  with  better  grace  than  our  own 
people.  The  most  unpopular  proposal  that  the  mind  of 
man  could  invent  and  present  to  Americans  to-day  would 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  PEACE  27 

be  one  calling  for  an  increase  of  taxes  to  be  spent  on 
an  army  and  navy. 

That  this  is  no  mere  personal  opinion  of  mine  has  been 
abundantly  proved  by  the  tremendous  public  response 
to  the  campaign  which  the  New  York  " World"  has  been 
conducting  in  favor  of  international  disarmament.  It 
is  not  exaggerating  to  say  that  ninety-nine  out  of  every 
one  hundred  intelligent  and  influential  Americans, 
Canadians,  and  Englishmen  who  have  expressed  them 
selves  through  the  columns  of  that  newspaper  have  de 
clared  themselves  unreservedly  against  further  naval  and 
military  expenditures. 

As  for  Japan,  the  effect  of  her  own  bad  financial  and 
industrial  condition  and  her  crushing  military  expendi 
tures  cannot  be  construed  as  simply  as  Europe's  or 
America's.  The  reasons  for  this  will  be  considered  at 
some  length  in  a  later  chapter.  Enough  to  say  here  that, 
while  discontent  seems  to  be  growing  in  Japan,  specially 
over  militaristic  taxes,  which  now  make  up  more  than 
half  of  the  imperial  budget,  we  find  evidences  of  the  same 
ominous  tendency  that  swept  Germany  into  war  in  1914, 
namely  the  feeling  that  the  Government,  having  invested 
millions  in  armament,  would  be  foolish  if  it  did  not  do  its 
utmost  to  make  the  investment  pay  a  profit.  This  feeling 
is  intensified  by  the  very  one  that  swayed  a  good  many 
militarists  in  Germany,  to  wit,  the  suspicion  that  inter 
national  affairs  may  before  very  long  shape  themselves  so 
that  such  profit-taking  by  force  of  arms  will  become  im 
possible.  Japan,  we  must  bear  in  mind,  is  the  only  large 
nation  in  the  world  whose  rulers  and  common  people  alike 
have  not  yet  learned  by  bitter  experience  that  in  the  long 


28  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

run  money  spent  on  wars  of  conquest  is  a  dead  loss — and 
worse.  And  we  must  likewise  remember  that  in  these 
circumstances  an  industrial  and  financial  depression  like 
the  present  one  in  Japan  inevitably  stirs  certain  groups 
of  citizens  to  seek  relief  in  foreign  adventure  and  to  win 
official  support  for  such  adventure. 

This  depression  is  now  very  grave,  and  in  the  opinion 
of  expert  observers  will  grow  much  worse  before  it  takes 
a  turn  for  the  better.  It  is  worth  our  while  to  glance  at 
some  of  its  aspects  as  revealed  in  our  own  consular  re 
ports.  The  November  letters  to  our  Department  of  Com 
merce  give  us  a  gloomy  picture  of  stagnation  throughout 
the  empire.  Postal-savings  deposits  have  been  decreasing 
at  the  rate  of  nearly  half  a  million  yen  a  day,  despite 
strenuous  official  efforts  to  stimulate  them.  The  railways 
are  discharging  workers,  as  a  consequence  of  dwindling 
traffic.  At  the  end  of  August  eighty  ships  lay  idle,  and 
the  number  was  steadily  increasing  at  all  ports.  In 
Tokio  there  used  to  be  five  automobiles  sold  every  day. 
Now  one  is  being  sold,  and  that  one  is  usually  a  second 
hand  machine.  In  one  month,  since  the  depression 
began,  ninety  automobile  licenses  were  turned  in  for  can 
cellation,  and  less  than  one  half  of  all  the  cars  in  town 
are  being  used  at  all.  In  Kobe  and  Osaka  wages  were 
cut  fifteen  per  cent,  in  August.  Thousands  of  factory 
and  shop  workers  are  streaming  back  to  their  old  homes 
in  the  country,  for  on  November  20  all  the  silk  mills  of 
the  country,  with  but  a  few  exceptions,  closed  down  for 
ninety  days,  because  they  could  not  afford  to  operate, 
with  the  prevailing  wage  scales  and  silk  prices.  In  the 
hope  of  finding  much  cheaper  labor  some  factories  are 
now  preparing  to  move  to  Korea  and  China,  and  our 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  PEACE     29 

trade  commissioners  believe  that  this  tendency  will  grow 
and  spread. 

Not  a  few  distinguished  economists,  surveying  such 
facts  as  these,  assure  us  that  war  is  impossible  or  at  least, 
if  begun  in  a  fit  of  foolishness,  must  quickly  end.  We 
recall  a  number  of  distinguished  theorists  who  proved 
this  neatly  in  the  summer  of  1914.  We  even  remember 
one  or  two  who  repeated  their  demonstrations  after  the 
Germans  were  intrenched  before  the  walls  of  Paris.  Con 
fidently  these  experts  assured  us  that  people  were  too 
poor  to  pay  for  a  modern  war,  and  hence  the  war  simply 
could  not  go  on.  But  somehow  the  war  did.  To-day 
even  some  economists  have  learned  that  wars  are  made 
and  won  and  lost  more  by  psychology  than  by  economics. 
To-day  all  Europe  is  witnessing  half  a  dozen  demonstra 
tions  of  this  truth.  We  see  bankrupt  Poland  blithely 
fighting  on  and  on.  We  observe  penniless  Turks  and 
Hindus  massing  to  shatter  the  British  Empire  up  and 
down  the  Mesopotamian  Valley,  in  a  war  which  already 
has  become  as  costly  and  as  exhausting  as  the  Boer  War 
was  and  which,  according  to  the  London  "Times,"  can 
never  yield  profits  in  oil  that  will  compensate  for  the 
thousands  of  lives  destroyed  and  the  hundreds  of  mil 
lions  of  pounds  "poured  into  that  repellent  region." 
We  look  upon  poor  bankrupt  France  plotting  a  dozen 
wars  all  over  Eastern  Europe  and  even  making  the  ges 
ture  of  financing  them.  Would  it  not  seem  rash  then  to 
declare  that  Japan's  recently  weakened  financial  state 
will  restrain  her  from  war?  Cannot  poor  men  fight  in 
the  high  hope  of  becoming  rich?  Must  a  man  have  a 
dollar  in  his  pocket  in  order  to  strike  a  foe  down  with 
a  stone  ?  Have  not  beggars  been  known  to  smash  in  shop 


30  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

windows,  to  seize  a  loaf  of  bread  ?  Let  us  beware  of  the 
economists  who  base  everything  on  a  theory  of  money. 
Not  money,  but  men,  material,  and  morale  will  decide  the 
coming,  as  well  as  the  finish,  of  a  war  between  East  and 
West. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  estimate  the  fourth  influ 
ence  that  makes  for  peace ;  namely,  Japan 's  economic  de 
pendence  upon  the  United  States.  Few  Americans  real 
ize  that,  to-day  and  for  some  few  years  to  come,  this  is 
by  far  the  strongest  deterrent  to  war.  How  far  into  the 
future  it  will  continue  nobody  knows.  Certainly  the 
Japanese  are  doing  their  utmost  to  emancipate  themselves 
from  the  thraldom,  and  their  activities  on  the  continent 
of  Asia  warrant  the  supposition  that  within  a  few  dec 
ades  their  manufacturers  may  be  able  to  dispense  with 
our  raw  materials  and  even  our  equipment  machinery. 

So  far  as  the  Japanese-California  crisis  of  1920  is  con 
cerned,  however,  we  can  safely  declare  that  the  new  in 
dustrialists  of  Japan  and  their  financial  agents  must  and 
will  exert  themselves  to  prevent  a  breach  between  their 
Government  and  our  own.  The  reasons  for  this  appear 
startlingly  in  the  trade  reports. 

Far  and  away  the  largest  and  most  profitable  industry 
of  Japan  is  the  production  of  raw  silk.  In  1919  the 
country  exported  to  the  world  at  large  $310,873,825 
worth  of  it.  Of  this  immense  total  the  United  States 
bought  no  less  than  $299,520,354  worth.  Out  of  every 
$100  worth,  we  took  more  than  $96.  Add  to  raw  silk 
the  various  forms  of  silk  goods,  and  you  find  that  in  the 
same  year  we  bought  more  than  $327,000,000  worth  from 
Japan,  which  exceeds  eighty-seven  per  cent,  of  that  em 
pire's  total  amount  exported.  Naturally,  Japanese  silk 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  PEACE     31 

producers  and  manufacturers  are  not  to  be  found  among 
those  clamoring  for  war  with  us. 

Japan's  second  largest  industry  is  textiles.  In  1919 
she  exported  $139,735,064  of  cotton  tissues  and  around 
$71,000,000  of  miscellaneous  cotton  goods,  such  as  tow 
els,  underclothing,  and  the  like.  The  fiber  out  of  which 
she  makes  these  she  buys  in  almost  equal  amounts  from 
India  and  the  United  States.  In  1919  we  sold  her  manu 
facturers  $142,627,053  worth  of  raw  cotton,  all  of  which 
was  superior  to  the  bales  from  India,  where  only  a  very 
low  grade  of  short  staple  is  produced  in  any  quantity. 
Now,  Japan  buys  cotton  not  only  for  her  export  trade, 
but  also  for  her  own  raiment.  She  produces  virtually 
no  cotton  or  wool  and  is  thus  utterly  dependent  upon 
India  and  the  United  States  to  clothe  the  nakedness  of 
her  millions.  In  the  event  of  war  she  would  also  have  to 
draw  on  one  or  both  of  these  same  sources  for  cotton  to  be 
used  in  the  manufacture  of  explosives.  The  significance 
of  these  facts  begins  to  appear  startlingly  when  we  recall 
that  the  Philippine  Islands  completely  dominate  every 
sea  route  between  India  and  Japan.  For  almost  a  thou 
sand  miles  they  flank  the  China  Sea,  and  they  are  equally 
a  most  convenient  base  of  operations  for  a  blockading 
fleet  that  might  patrol  the  open  Pacific  between  Malaysia 
and  Japan.  We  may  grant  that  the  United  States  would 
probably  have  great  difficulty  in  holding  its  own  against 
the  Japanese  in  the  Philippines,  but  it  would  still  be 
true  that  even  a  partly  successful  interruption  of  Japan's 
cotton  supply  from  India,  if  coupled  with  a  total  suspen 
sion  of  cotton  exports  from  our  own  country  to  Japan, 
would  inevitably  precipitate  a  tremendous  crisis  in  the 
island  empire — a  crisis  certainly  more  serious  than  that 


32  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

caused  in  Germany  by  the  cutting  off  of  overseas  cotton 
imports  during  the  Allied  blockade  of  the  Baltic  Sea  and 
the  North  Sea.  There  would  be  left  to  the  Japanese  only 
one  possible  source  of  cotton,  and  that  source  a  meager 
and  uncertain  one.  It  would  be  China.  In  1919  this 
country  sent  to  Japan  $38,219,886  worth  of  raw  cotton, 
or  about  eleven  per  cent,  of  the  total  needed  by  Japan. 
Would  the  Chinese  cotton-growers  and  brokers  deliver 
even  this  much,  though,  in  case  Japan  were  at  war  with 
us  ?  It  can  scarcely  be  entertained  as  a  serious  prospect, 
so  intense  is  the  hatred  of  Japan  among  the  Chinese. 
The  chances  are  that  China  would  rather  make  ingenious 
efforts  to  divert  every  pound  of  fiber  from  her  deadly 
foe.  And  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Japanese  textile 
manufacturers  are  painfully  aware  of  all  this.  The 
American  shipping  concerns  in  the  Pacific  area  know  it. 
Indeed,  some  of  their  best-informed  officials  have  told  me 
that  a  cotton  embargo  and  blockade  could  completely 
ruin  Japan  within  ninety  days  and  drive  the  militarists 
from  power.  This  seems  pretty  extreme,  and  too  good 
to  be  true ;  but  it  is  worth  recording  here  as  an  opinion. 

At  present  Japan  is  wofully  dependent  upon  us  for 
her  supply  of  semi-finished  iron  and  steel,  as  well  as  for 
engines  and  machinery.  Look  again  at  the  figures  for 
1919.  Japan  bought  $78,103,811  worth  of  bars,  rods, 
plates,  and  the  like  from  foreign  countries,  of  which  total 
we  furnished  $66,761,099  worth.  She  bought  $44,477,135 
worth  of  engines  and  machines,  of  which  we  supplied  ex 
actly  three  quarters.  And  we  furnished  almost  every 
dollar's  worth  of  materials  she  bought  for  building 
bridges,  docks,  railways,  and  ships.  All  of  which  would 
indicate  that  her  new  industrial  life  is  closely  bound  up 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  PEACE     33 

with  our  own.  Buying  from  us  and  selling  to  us  in  vol 
ume  more  than  twice  as  great  as  their  gross  trade  with 
any  other  country,  Japanese  merchants  and  manufactur 
ers  must  be  profoundly  interested  in  maintaining  the 
friendliest  of  relations  with  the  United  States.  And,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  we  do  find  this  to  be  their  attitude.  The 
anti-American  sentiment  in  Japan  to-day  does  not  ema 
nate  from  these  powerful  groups,  nor  does  it  find  even  a 
faint  echo  in  them;  and  they  are  steadfastly  opposing 
the  various  sinister  influences  that  make  for  ill  feeling 
and  war. 

Does  all  this  warrant  the  belief  that  war  is  too  remote 
a  possibility  to  be  seriously  discussed  ?  Alas !  no.  Over 
against  these  pacific  influences  we  find  many  vicious  ones, 
and  still  more  which,  while  not  vicious,  are  even  more 
dangerous  because  they  root  in  venerable  traditions,  in 
folk-ways,  in  popular  ignorance,  and  in  that  fatal  inca 
pacity  of  most  men  to  think  clearly  and  take  intelligent 
action  concerning  matters  that  lie  beyond  the  routine  of 
their  everyday  life.  We  must  consider  all  such  forces, 
in  Japan  as  well  as  at  home,  for  on  a  clear  understanding 
of  them  hinges  a  wise  solution  of  the  present  crisis. 


CHAPTER  4 
FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOB  WAE 

BEFORE  the  World  War  many  Americans  boasted  of 
our  "magnificent  isolation"  and  our  freedom  from 
"entangling  alliances."  They  felt  the  United  States 
to  be  a  world  apart,  an  earthly  paradise  uncontami- 
nated  by  the  ills  of  the  Old  World.  From  1914  to 
1917  this  traditional  outlook  steadily  changed  its  colors, 
and  was  finally  abandoned  as  out-of-date  and  perilous. 
The  menace  of  Prussian  militarism  stretched  across  the 
Atlantic  and  stirred  us  to  take  a  strenuous  part  in  shap 
ing  the  destinies  of  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  on  Armis 
tice  Day  it  looked  to  most  of  us  as  if  our  nation  was  about 
to  assume  that  very  moral  leadership  of  the  world  which 
had  been  so  ardently  professed  by  Wilson  and  echoed  by 
the  Committee  of  Public  Information. 

What  has  happened  since  that  day  demonstrates  that 
Americans  have  not  miraculously  changed  their  folk 
ways.  It  has  proved  that  we  are  no  more  intelligent  and 
no  more  adaptable  than  any  of  the  European  groups 
from  which  our  hodge-podge  population  is  derived. 
Both  the  calamitous  transactions  at  Versailles  and  the 
tremendous  anti-Wilson  vote  of  the  recent  election  con 
stitute  the  most  complete  exhibition  in  all  modern  his 
tory  of  the  laws  of  social  inertia  and  the  pragmatic  na 
ture  of  human  thought,  about  which  our  social  psycholo 
gists  have  been  talking  these  many  years.  American  pro- 

34 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  WAR  35 

vincialism  is  the  natural  consequence  of  the  working  of 
these  laws  in  our  unique  environment.  We  must  look 
carefully  at  it,  because  it  is  one  of  the  two  gravest  perils 
in  the  present  crisis. 

Social  inertia  is  the  resistance  to  change  in  our  ways 
of  thinking  and  doing.  It  is  merely  another  name  for  a 
vast  complex  of  well-established  habits.  These  habits 
range  from  such  simple  affairs  as  eating  breakfast  foods 
and  using  wooden  toothpicks  up  to  such  highly  intellec 
tual  processes  as  defending  the  traditional  American 
ideals  of  "life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness," 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  the  purchase  of  a  home  on  the  in 
stalment  plan,  and  so  on.  Each  of  these  habits  is  the 
result  of  a  long  and  more  or  less  skilful  adaptation  to 
certain  conditions  in  one's  environment. 

And  it  is  one  of  the  outstanding  discoveries  of  modern 
psychology  that  the  skill  a  man  acquires  in  building  up 
one  habit  can  be  transferred  to  a  new  and  different  sub 
ject  only  in  proportion  to  the  degree  of  resemblance  be 
tween  the  original  subject  and  the  new  one.  Thus  you 
might  acquire  much  proficiency  in  reading  Greek,  but 
this  habit  would  be  of  no  use  to  you  in  repairing  umbrel 
las,  and  it  would  be  of  very  slight  value  in  helping  you 
to  speak  French.  The  motions  you  go  through  in  mend 
ing  an  umbrella  are  quite  different  from  those  you  must 
make  in  conjugating  a  Greek  verb  and  translating  The 
ocritus.  And  so,  too,  with  the  mental  operations  in 
volved.  To  become  expert  in  mending  umbrellas,  you 
had  best  mend  umbrellas  for  a  few  years.  If  you  wish 
to  speak  French  well,  do  not  waste  time  on  Greek  or 
Latin;  the  same  time  spent  on  French  will  yield  much 
richer  results. 


36  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Now  this  general  law  of  habit  holds  good  of  every  sub 
ject  under  the  sun.  Neither  politics  nor  morals  offers  a 
single  exception  to  it.  Once  you  grasp  this  tremendous 
fact,  you  will  understand  many  events  in  recent  Ameri 
can  history  which  may  have  been  dark  to  you. 

For  instance,  the  disconcerting  collapse  of  our  ideal 
istic  efforts  at  the  peace  conference.  As  a  psychologist 
sees  that  dismal  fiasco,  we  Americans  were  in  pretty  much 
the  same  situation  at  Paris  as  a  school-boy  would  be  who, 
after  having  studied  Greek  for  four  years  in  the  fond 
hope  that  it  would  "train  his  mind,"  finds  himself  on 
board  a  ship  with  a  disabled  engine  and  a  mutinous 
crew,  and  undertakes  to  repair  the  engine  and  subdue 
the  rioters  with  his  trained  mind. 

For  three  full  generations  we  Americans  had  been 
acquiring  the  habit  of  turning  our  backs  on  Europe. 
We  had  been  acquiring  the  habit  of  busying  ourselves 
with  our  own  domestic  problems  and  aspirations.  In 
such  light  esteem  did  we  hold  our  relations  with  the 
rest  of  the  world  that  we  regularly  appointed  ex-saloon 
keepers,  shoddy  lawyers,  and  third  cousins  of  hill-billy 
Congressmen  to  represent  the  United  States  abroad  in 
the  diplomatic  and  consular  services.  And  our  State  De 
partment  was,  in  comparison  with  similar  European  in 
stitutions,  a  feeble  joke.  In  all  America  there  existed  no 
sizable  group  of  citizens  who  had  habitually  dealt  with 
British  colonial  policies  or  with  European  railway  prob 
lems  or  with  Turkish  finances.  And  it  followed  inex 
orably  that  on  the  day  when  we  had  to  deal  with  such 
intricate  issues  we  were  utterly  unable  to  do  so.  One 
does  not  pick  up  full  understanding  of  Europe  overnight. 
One  does  not  do  it  even  by  reading  "The  Literary  Di- 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  WAR  37 

gest"  and  the  " Saturday  Evening  Post."  Habit  is  too 
strong. 

Reinforcing  this  immense  social  inertia,  the  law  of  in 
terest  stands  as  the  second  force  that  makes  for  provin 
cialism  always.  Men  give  their  undivided  attention  and 
their  best  mental  effort  only  to  things  which  either  dis 
turb  their  ways  of  comfortable  living  or  else  gratify 
their  desires.  Whenever  they  are  led  to  think  about  any 
thing  else,  they  think  lazily,  at  random,  and  in  a  more  or 
less  inconsequential  fashion,  not  bothering  to  check  up 
closely  on  either  the  facts  or  their  own  conclusions. 
When  nothing  is  at  stake,  both  truth  and  consistency 
cease  to  be  virtues. 

This  is  the  most  natural  result  of  the  law  of  adaptation 
that  runs  through  all  life.  In  man's  million-year  strug 
gle  for  existence  it  has  always  been  his  own  immediate 
surroundings  to  which  he  has  been  compelled  to  attend 
or  perish.  It  has  always  been  the  lion  in  the  path,  the 
mote  in  the  eye,  the  thief  in  the  night,  the  bird  in  the 
hand,  that  has  commanded  serious  attention  and  in 
genious  action.  Things  long  ago  and  far  away  could  be 
overlooked,  but  the  day's  hunger  and  thirst  and  storms 
and  plagues  and  quarrels  had  to  be  managed.  Thus 
upon  these  latter  men  came  to  concentrate  their  wits. 

Hence  it  is  that  to-day  the  average  citizen  instinct 
ively  devotes  more  time  and  thought  trying  to  find  who 
borrowed  his  hammer  while  he  was  talking  with  the  fore 
man  than  he  spends  on  devising  a  budget  system  for  the 
United  States.  And  for  this  same  reason  you  can  trust 
his  judgment  and  his  behavior  in  choosing  a  dog  to  hunt 
rabbits  with,  but  not  in  deciding  whether  the  United 
States  ought  to  assume  a  mandate  over  Armenia. 


38  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

If  this  were  the  proper  place  for  such  an  analysis,  we 
might  show  this  law  of  interest,  combining  with  the  law 
of  habit,  shaped  almost  every  disastrous  move,  as  well  as 
every  wise  one,  since  1914.  It  was  these  two  laws  and 
nothing  else  that  kept  us  out  of  the  war  until  1917.  It 
was  the  law  of  interest  that  finally  led  us  to  crush  Ger 
many,  and  it  was  the  two  laws  that  caused  our  soldiers 
and  their  relatives  back  home  to  wish  nothing  better 
than  to  get  back  to  the  old  town,  forget  Europe  and  its 
nastiness,  and  play  ball  again.  The  two  most  completely 
typical  Americanisms  of  the  last  six  years  were  the  empty 
idealism  of  Wilson's  Paris  program  and  the  savage  reac 
tion  against  internationalism  in  all  its  forms,  culminating 
in  the  prodigious  vote  given  to  Harding  last  November. 
Here  we  cannot  explain  this  statement  as  fully  as  it  de 
serves  to  be.  We  must  hasten  to  show  how  the  two  great 
mental  laws  are  making  the  Japanese  crisis  an  unusually 
difficult  one  to  present  fairly  and  to  solve. 

There  seem  to  be  only  three  habits  of  thinking  about 
Japan  which  are  present  in  enough  Americans  to  make 
them  at  all  influential  politically.  They  are : 

1.  The  missionary  habit. 

2.  The  California  habit,  and 

3.  The  foreign  trade  habit. 

The  missionary  habit  has  two  radically  different,  and 
even  antagonistic,  forms.  One  is  the  old,  the  other  the 
new.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  to-day  the  old  form 
dominates  the  thinking  of  many  more  Americans  than 
the  new  form  does.  We  still  find  it  clearly  expressed  in 
the  more  conservative  religious  publications  and  we  hear 
it  at  missionary  meetings,  especially  where  funds  are 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  WAR  39 

being  raised  for  the  "poor  heathen."  This  phrase, 
1  *  poor  heathen, ' '  f  airly  characterizes  the  habit.  The  pic 
ture  which  the  average  American  churchman  has  of 
Japan  is  that  which  virtually  all  missionaries  used  to 
draw  twenty  years  ago  and  earlier.  Somewhat  abridged 
and  conventionalized,  it  contains  the  following  scenes : 

Japan  is  a  heathen  country  full  of  half-civilized  or 
barbarous  people  who  have  never  enjoyed  the  blessings 
of  Christian  civilization.     They  are  terribly  ignorant  and 
scandalously  immoral.     The  Government  runs  houses  of 
ill  fame.     Little  children  are  taught  to  worship  graven 
images.     And  there  are  hundreds  of  villages  without  a) 
single  Methodist  or  Baptist  church.     Thieves  and  mur-/ 
derers  abound  on  every  hand,  and  the  shopkeepers  cheatj 
their  customers  whenever  they  get  a  chance. 

We  shall  have  something  to  say  in  later  chapters  about 
this  conventional  view  of  Japan.  Enough  here  to  re 
mark  that  it  is  considerably  less  than  a  half-truth  and 
wofully  misleading. 

The  new  missionary  view,  which  has  become  the  habit-  I 
ual  one  in  many  younger  Americans,  gives  us  an  almost 
diametrically  opposed  panorama  of  the  far-away  empire. 
It  is  the  brotherhood-of-man  doctrine  applied  to  Japan, 
somewhat  as  follows : 

The  Japanese  are  human  beings  like  ourselves  in  every 
respect.  They  know  the  same  hopes  and  fears,  they  have 
the  same  loves  and  hates.  They  work  for  a  living,  save 
money,  try  to  get  along  with  their  neighbors,  and  go  out 
of  their  way  to  seek  trouble  no  more  than  Americans  do. 
They  have  politicians  and  schemers,  business  men  and 
priests,  agitators  and  high-minded  reformers,  even  as  we 
do.  The  differences  between  them  and  us  are  all  super- 


40  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

ficial.  They  dress  differently,  speak  a  strange  tongue, 
and  do  various  little  things  in  manners  odd  to  us.  It  is 
only  our  own  ignorance  that  leads  us  to  think  that  such 
customs  mean  anything. 

This  view,  while  much  more  charitable  than  the  old 
missionary  picture,  is  unfortunately  a  half-truth.     Of 
his  more  later. 

The  California  habit  of  thinking  about  Japan  likewise 
has  two  forms.  The  better  known  one  is  the  journalistic 
view,  which  has  been  spread  abroad  chiefly  by  the  Hearst 
newspapers  and  is  to-day  probably  the  most  widely  dis 
seminated  opinion  about  Japan  east  of  the  Mississippi 
River.  Millions  of  copies  of  cheap  newspapers  have 
been  spreading  it  for  the  last  ten  years.  The  mere  act 
of  seeing  it  in  print  so  often  has  fixed  it  in  thousands  of 
> minds.  Here  is  the  picture  it  presents: 
II  Japan  is  the  most  diabolical  conspiracy  on  earth.  The 
//  mikado  and  a  few  evil  old  aristocrats  known  as  the  Elder 
Statesmen,  seeing  the  attractions  of  the  Philippines,  Ha 
waii,  California,  and  China,  are  secretly  planning  to 
invade  all  these  lands  and  conquer  them.  They  are 
building  a  colossal  navy  and  drilling  a  mighty  army. 
*  They  have  flooded  the  United  States  with  spies.  Every 
Japanese  valet  is  a  spy,  instructed  to  read  his  employer's 
private  letters  and  report  on  the  same  to  Tokio.  Every 
Japanese  working  on  section  gangs  of  our  Pacific-coast 
railways  is  a  spy  who  finds  good  places  to  plant  bombs  to 
blow  up  railway  bridges  and  switch  towers  when  the 
mikado  invades  California.  Millions  of  Japanese  have 
already  been  secretly  landed  in  Mexico  and  are  hiding  in 
the  hills,  there  to  await  the  great  day  when  America  falls 
under  their  assaults., , 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  WAR  41 

The  reader  who  supposes  that  the  above  paragraph  has 
been  written  in  the  attempt  to  be  funny  must  disillusion 
limself.  Not  a  line  of  that  picture  has  been  invented, 
present  writer  has  studied  several  hundred  news 
items  on  Japan  published  in  the  Hearst  papers  during 
the  last  decade  and  has  found  not  only  these  allegations, 
but  scores  of  others  so  ridiculous  that  only  children  and 
morons  could  have  taken  them  seriously.  Needless  to 
say,  this  journalistic  picture  is  a  jumble  in  which  fact  is 
sadly  overlaid  with  fancy. // 

There  is  another  habit  Q£  appraising  Japan  and  the 
Japanese  in  California  which  few  Americans  outside  that 
State  know  about.  It  has  almost  wholly  displaced  the 
above  journalistic  habit  out  there.  It  is  the  new  habit 
of  those  farmers,  ranch-owners,  and  business  men  who 
have  gained  some  degree  of  real  understanding.  It  is 
peculiarly  hard  to  characterize  this  opinion  briefly.  It 
has  arisen  out  of  many  facts  strange  to  most  Americans, 
and  it  is  rather  bewildering  unless  supplemented  by  full 
explanations.  So  we  must  defer  all  accounts  of  it  for 
the  moment.  Of  all  the  mental  habits  worthy  of  men 
tion,  this  one  is  at  present  the  weakest  and  the  least  dan 
gerous.  Indeed,  the  only  danger  in  it  lies  in  the  ease 
with  which  its  real  significance  may  be  misunderstood. 

The  foreign  trade  habit  also  is  twofold.  There  is  the 
habit  of  the  American  shipowner,  which  is  also  held  by 
those  manufacturers  who  are  meeting  or  expect  to  meet 
with  competition  from  the  Japanese.  According  to  this 
opinion,  Japan  is  determined  to  master  the  trade  of  the 
Pacific  and  will  stop  at  nothing  to  accomplish  her  pur 
pose.  It  is  a  land  where  the  Government  and  big  busi 
ness  are  one,  hence  a  land  whose  diplomacy  and  interna- 


42  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tional  politics  are  invariably  molded  to  the  desires  of  her 
captains  of  industry.  The  masses  do  not  count.  It  is 
only  a  matter  of  years  when  Japan  will  have  driven 
American  ships  off  the  Pacific  and  American  goods  out 
of  Asia.  Her  military  despotism  is  only  the  tool  of  her 
economic  despotism. 

There  is  a  good  deal  of  truth  in  this  opinion,  as  we 
shall  try  to  show ;  but  it  omits  many  vital  elements  from 
the  picture.  And  some  of  these  omissions  give  rise  to 
serious  misunderstandings  as  to  Japan's  motives  and 
methods. 

-  The  other  foreign  trade  habit  is  much  newer  and,  while 
present  in  very  few  Americans,  happens  to  control  the 
thinking  of  a  small  group  of  immensely  powerful  citi 
zens.  It  is  the  opinion  of  the  international  bankers. 
These  gentlemen  see  in  Japan  a  shrewd  and  highly  useful 
partner  in  the  greatest  enterprise  of  all  time;  namely, 
the  industrialization  of  Asia.  In  this  colossal  under 
taking  Japan  is  to  furnish  the  labor,  and  America  the 
capital.  China  will  be  allowed  to  contribute,  of  course ; 
but  the  financiers  of  Wall  Street  and  the  industrialists 
of  Osaka  and  Kobe  will  manage  the  affair.  Japan  and 
her  ruling  class  are  America's  best  friends.  We  have 
one  interest  in  the  Pacific  area,  they  have  another;  and 
each  is  necessary  to  the  other.  By  cooperation  both 
Japan  and  America  will  reap  enormous  profits. 

//  This  opinion  is  correct  as  far  as  it  goes.  But  the  nar 
rowness  of  its  economic  interest  prevents  it  from  giving 
us  a  full  picture  of  Japan;  and  here,  as  in  earlier  in 
stances,  the  view  is  full  of  danger,  s/ 

How  incomplete  all  these  ways 'of  appraising  Japan 
are!  To  realize  their  short-comings,  you  have  only  to 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  WAR  43 

conjure  up  parallel  opinions  about  our  own  country  such 
as  you  may  find  aired  in  the  entertaining,  volumes  of 
those  distinguished  foreign  tourists  who  tarry  a  week  in 
New  York  or  lecture  to  Boston  for  a  winter  on  the  higher 
philosophies  of  India.//The  sorry  fact  is  that  the  Ameri 
can  public  has  no  thinking  habits  that  are  at  the  same 
time  old  enough,  comprehensive  enough,  and  accurate 
enough  to  form  a  basis  for  a  national  policy  with  regard 
to  Japan.^xUnhappily,  we  have  fallen  into  several  habits  j 
that  are4o  perversive  and  so  old  that  we  cannot  discard  ! 
them  by  a  mere  act  of  will./^ The  two  most  harmful  of 
these  certainly  are  th£_pld  misjdonary  habit,  ^nd  the  jonr- 
nalistic  habit. //'The  unwillingness  of  Americans  to  treat 
Orientals  as  political  equals  can  be  partly  traced  to  the 
deep,  sometimes  hazy,  but  always  strong  feeling  that  Ori 
entals  really  are  what  the  old-school  missionary  declared 
them  to  be,  "poor  heathen."  This  feeling  has  been  in 
terminably  reinforced  by  the  shrieking  and  sensation- 
peddling  of  the  back-stairs  newspapers^'  Both  habits  are, 
of  course,  doomed  to  weaken  and  die,  but  they  may  linger, 
long  enough  to  cause  incurable  mischief.  ,, 

They  would  not  linger  if  many  Americans  had  any  J6 
vital  and  clearly  recognized  interests  in  Japan.  But  j£J 
they  have  not.  /  There  is  less  personal  contact  between 
Japanese  and  Americans  to-day  than  there  was  between 
Germans  and  Americans  before  the  World  WarTand  for 
every  one  American  who  has  something  at  stake  m  Japan, 
be  it  money  or  friendships  or  family  ties,  there  are  a 
thousand  who  are  intimately  concerned  over  somebody 
or  something  in  Germany.  Millions  of  our  citizens  still 
have  parents,  grandparents,  or  other  relatives  in  Ger 
many.  Not  a  thousand  of  us  have  any  such  in  Japan. 


44  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

So,  too,  in  the  business  field.  While  the  volume  of  trade 
between  Japan  and  the  United  States  is  immense,  the 
number  of  Americans  whose  fortunes  are  bound  up  in  it 
is  very  small.  As  has  already  been  shown,  the  bulk  of 
our  buying  in  Japan  is  in  silk,  most  of  which  goes  to  a 
hundred  or  more  corporations.  As  for  our  selling,  which 
is  mostly  raw  cotton  and  semi-finished  iron  and  steel,  it 
is  mostly  consummated  through  a  few  export  houses; 
and  the  world  demand  for  these  products  is  so  vast  that 
it  makes  little  difference  to  our  cotton-grower  or  our 
miner  whether  Japan  buys  or  not.  Strictly  speaking, 
there  has  never  been  any  public  sentiment  in  the  United 
States  over  foreign  trade,  or  over  any  other  foreign  rela 
tions,  for  that  matter.  And  the  reason  is  that  America 
is  economically  self-sufficient  and  also  has  such  an  enor 
mous  domestic  demand  for  all  sorts  of  commodities  that 
our  manufacturers  and  distributors  did  not  have  to  worry 
much  over  foreign  orders  save  in  a  few  lines,  mostly 
food-stuffs  and  raw  materials.  And  it  is  a  notorious 
commonplace  that  for  many  years  much  of  our  foreign 
trade  in  manufactured  goods  was  allowed  to  go  by  default 
to  concerns  who  cared  nothing  at  all  for  their  customers 
after  cashing  the  remittance  checks  and  who  violated 
every  clause  in  the  moral  code  of  decent  business,  to  the 
everlasting  injury  of  our  country.  Of  this  commercial 
provincialism  Japan  has  had  her  taste.  And,  as  for  our 
own  mercantile  and  commercial  classes,  the  habit  con 
tinues  to-day  in  the  milder  form  of  indifference  toward 
and  ignorance  of  Japan  and  her  affairs. 

It  is  only  on  the  Pacific  coast  that  provincialism  with 
respect  to  Japan  is  not  to  be  found.  The  Californians 
find  more  than  one  vital  interest  in  the  affairs  of  that 


FORCES  THAT  MAKE  FOR  WAR  45 

land  and  have  had  more  than  one  occasion  to  think  se 
riously  about  them.  American  shipping  interests  out 
there  are  in  competition  with  the  Japanese  and  have  to 
reckon  with  them  constantly.  Storekeepers  in  the 
smaller  towns  are  rapidly  coming  to  the  same  pass. 
Farmers  are  encountering  these  aliens  in  new  quarters 
from  week  to  week.  In  the  banking  business,  in  the  fish 
eries,  and  other  lines,  Japanese  workers  and  Japanese 
money  have  ceased  to  be  shadowy  things  concerning 
which  juvenile  newspaper  scribblers  may  lightly  dis 
course.  The  rest  of  our  country  does  not  yet  understand 
this.  You  hear  on  every  hand  east  of  Denver  that  the  ! 
whole  hullabaloo  out  on  the  coast  is  just  another  sputter 
of  yellow  journalism.  Scarcely  one  Eastern  newspaper 
of  good  repute  takes  the  Japanese  crisis  seriously.  And 
in  this  indifference,  born  of  ancient  habits  and  lack  of 
personal  interest,  we  find  a  menace  to  world  peace. 


CHAPTER  5 
ILLUSIONS  ABOUT   JAPAN 

LACK  of  contact  with  Japanese  and  ignorance  of  the 
Japanese  language  have  been  responsible  for  sev 
eral  false  impressions  about  this  far-away  land.  Some 
of  these  impressions  have  been  highly  favorable  and 
therefore  have  been  widely  exploited  by  all  lovers  of 
.Japan,  including  the  paid  propagandists.  Others  have 
be'eia  equally  unfavorable  and  injurious,  and  so  the 
enemies  of  Japan  have  heralded  them  abroad.  In  the 
interest,  not  of  scientific  truth,  but  of  steering  the 
American  public  along  its  increasingly  difficult  course  in 
foreign  affairs,  we  must  give  brief  attention  to  the  more 
consequential  of  these  good  and  bad  illusions. 

The  most  widely  known  and  universally  held  illusion 
has  to  do  with  the  supposedly  superhuman  adaptability 
of  the  Japanese.  The  friends  of  Japan  harp  upon  it 
incessantly,  while  some  foes  imitate  a  shudder  as  they 
refer  to  it  as  a  sure  sign  that  Japan  is  a  world  menace. 
The  picture  that  is  held  up  to  us  is  that  of  some  sixty 
million  idolatrous  barbarians  languishing  in  a  primeval 
state,  living  in  tribes,  worshipping  strange  gods,  and 
being  generally  rather  Neolithic  until  some  forty  odd 
years  ago,  when  some  highly  civilized  states  on  the  oppo 
site  side  of  the  earth  impinged  upon  their  simple  soli 
tude.  The  sixty  million  idolatrous  barbarians  looked 

46 


ILLUSIONS  ABOUT  JAPAN  47 

with  awe  upon  the  steamships  and  strange  inventions. 
They  trembled  before  the  alien  cannon.  Then,  deciding 
that  intelligence  was  a  sound  investment,  even  if  it  did 
cost  money,  they  sent  their  chieftains  abroad  to  master 
the  secrets  of  success  in  Big  Business.  Then  the  miracle ! 
In  the  twinkling  of  a  nation's  eye,  Japan  made  herself 
over  from  a  feudal  state  on  the  level  of  thirteenth- 
century  Europe  to  a  twentieth-century  nation  on  a  par 
with  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States. 

Now,  any  psychologist  and  any  student  of  the  social 
sciences  knows,  even  without  the  slightest  special  infor 
mation  about  the  Japanese,  that  this  is  unadulterated  non 
sense.  It  is  a  commonplace  among  scientific  observers 
that  group  habits  can  not  be  transformed  at  any  such 
rate.  Not  even  in  our  own  country,  which  loves  to  think 
of  itself  as  faster  than  any  other  in  absorbing  new  ideas  j 
and  ways,  has  any  such  miracle  occurred.  Let  him  who 
thinks  otherwise  consider  a  few  indisputable  facts,  such 
as  American  behavior  with  respect  to  the  negro  and  to 
ward  liquor,  to  cite  only  two  from  a  possible  list  of  a 
hundred. 

Nearly  sixty  years  have  gone  by  since  our  Government 
freed  the  negro  and  gave  him  political  rights.  A  Japa 
nese  student,  poring  over  an  American  history  in  a  Tokio 
library,  would  probably  see  in  his  mind's  eye  this  whole 
race  of  oppressed  people  casting  aside  its  shackles,  as  the 
news  of  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  was  flashed 
across  the  land,  and  marching  to  the  polls,  running  for 
office,  and  grabbing  oft3  sundry  political  plums.  This,  be 
it  observed,  is  just  what  the  American  reader  imagines 
to  be  happening  when  he  reads  that  the  Japanese  have 
laid  aside  their  ancient  ways  and  become  Westernized. 


48  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Of  course,  what  has  really  happened  is  that  the  old 
Anglo-American  habit,  hundreds  of  years  old,  of  regard 
ing  the  negro  as  black  trash  has  not  been  weakened  per 
ceptibly  by  any  mere  pen  strokes  or  political  affirma 
tions.  So  far  as  real  political  liberty  or  suffrage  is  con 
cerned,  the  blacks  as  a  group  are  scarcely  a  step  ahead 
of  where  they  were  in  1860. 

Our  same  reader  in  a  Tokio  library,  perusing  the  news 
of  the  past  months  in  an  American  paper,  learns  that 
our  great  commonwealth  decided,  over  night,  that  alcohol 
was  an  insidious  evil  and  must  be  forthwith  extermi 
nated.  He  reads  of  breweries  being  closed  from  the 
Atlantic  to  the  Pacfic.  He  reads  about  thousands  of  sa 
loon  doors  being  closed  forever,  bars  being  dismantled, 
and  armies  of  disconsolate  bartenders  seeking  jobs  as 
butlers.  And  doubtless  he  exclaims  with  awe :  '  *  What 
a  race  of  supermen  these  Americans  are !  We  Japanese 
could  never  give  up  sake  this  way. ' '  But,  as  he  exclaims, 
some  millions  of  respectable  American  citizens,  bishops 
and  bankers,  statesmen  and  delicatessen  dealers,  white 
and  black,  rich  and  poor,  are  busily  brewing  beer  and 
concocting  amateur  whisky  in  their  kitchens.  As  every 
man's  house  is  his  castle,  so  every  man's  kitchen  is  his 
distillery.  And  it  will  be  for  many  years  to  come,  in 
spite  of  all  that  lawmakers  may  say  or  do.  For  it  is 
much  easier  to  make  laws  than  to  break  habits. 

As  with  us,  so  with  Japan.  The  Government  of  that 
country  has  been  passing  many  laws,  introducing  many 
improvements,  from  railroads  down  to  motion  pictures, 
and  working  in  the  direction  of  a  Western  civilization. 
But  the  old  deep  habits  of  looking  to  the  clan  heads,  of 
leaning  on  the  Elder  Statesmen,  of  feeling  superior  to 


ILLUSIONS  ABOUT  JAPAN  49 

the  foreigner  still  persist  beneath  the  veneer  of  statute 
and  ordinance.  We  see  this  truth  from  a  significant 
angle  when  we  study  at  close  range  the  * '  democratic 
trend"  in  Japan. 

There  is  some  truth  in  the  view  that  powerful  social 
and  economic  forces  are  tending  to  force  the  country 
further  and  further  toward  something  that  might  be 
called  a  democratic  social  order.  But  let  us  keep  in 
mind  that  such  social  forces  operate  very  much  as  ordi 
nary  physical  forces  do ;  when  they  encounter  resistance, 
they  are  first  of  all  and  to  a  considerable  degree  expended 
in  overcoming  the  inertia  of  the  thing  to  be  moved.  Not 
until  a  certain  critical  point  and  quantum  have  been  at 
tained  does  any  actual  motion  result.  So  in  Japan  to 
day.  As  we  shall  later  point  out  in  some  detail,  even  the  [ 
most  recent  extensions  of  the  suffrage  under  Hara  fall 
much  further  short  of  true  universal  suffrage  than  they 
seem  to  on  paper.  But,  even  if  they  did  not,  Japan 
would  still  be  profoundly  different  from  the  Western  • 
democracies  as  a  result  of  the  almost  unaltered  survival 
of  the  local  power  of  the  clans  and  of  the  go-no,  or  village 
superintendent. 

Japanese  society  still  roots  in  the  clan,  in  spite  of  the 
many  encroachments  upon  the  political  domination  of 
this  institution  during  recent  years.  The  clan  dialects 
are  still  spoken  in  most  of  the  country  districts.  The 
special  uniforms  of  the  clans  are  commonly  worn.  And 
it  is  through  the  clan  that  the  vast  majority  of  citizens, 
namely  those  in  the  rural  districts,  get  in  touch  with 
political  affairs,  secure  Government  posts,  and  receive 
instructions  as  to  voting.  Ever  since  feudal  days,  the 
small  farmers  have  been  held  strictly  under  the  control 


50  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

and  discipline  of  the  village  superintendent;  and  Japa 
nese  authorities  themselves  admit  that  the  go-no's  power 
to-day  exceeds  that  of  the  harshest  political  boss  in  the 
lowest  ward  of  Chicago  or  Boston. 

The  illusion  of  democracy  goes  further.  Most  pro- 
Japanese  writers  are  fond  of  pointing  to  the  rise  of  po 
litical  parties  in  Japan  as  a  sign  that  the  people  have 
suddenly  become  democratic.  But  one  might  as  well  call 
the  United  States  Steel  Corporation  a  sign  of  democracy 
in  America.  In  the  narrowest  sense  of  the  term,  the 
|  Japanese  party  is  a  class,  born  of  class  interests  and  per 
petuating  class  privileges  and  powers. 

The  Seiyukai,  of  which  Hara  is  the  head,  is  in  the  main 
made  up  of  the  rural  capitalists,  or  farm  landowners, 
who  live  on  rents  collected  from  small  tenants  and  gen 
erally  preserve  the  ideas  and  practices  of  the  old  feudal 
ism.  The  Kenseikai,  the  other  important  party  to-day, 
is  a  solid  body  of  the  urban  capitalists,  the  manufac 
turers  and  merchants,  and  the  upper  salaried  classes  em 
ployed  by  the  new  industrial  powers  of  Japan.  The 
reader  familiar  with  early  American  politics  will  note 
that  they  correspond  somewhat  to  the  original  American 
Democrats  and  Republicans,  who  were  respectively  the 
rich  farmers  and  the  urban  moneyed  class.  Like  our  own 
early  political  parties,  they  are  essentially  old-school 
bourgeoisie,  with  never  a  thought  as  to  the  interests  of 
the  masses  of  farm  or  city  workers. 

Within  these  parties  there  is  absolute  one-man  rule, 
which  is  the  only  rule  the  average  Japanese  understands. 
The  statement  has  been  made  by  Japanese  students  of 
government  that  a  council  of  eight  Seiyukai  leaders  and 
the  chief,  Hara,  settle  everything  as  to  platforms,  pro- 


ILLUSIONS  ABOUT  JAPAN  51 

grams,  and  detailed  procedure.  There  is  not  even  the 
pretense  of  open  caucus  or  national  convention  or  any 
thing  smacking  of  true  party  control. 

So  too  with  the  militarism  of  Japan,  which  has  been 
lately  explained  away  as  an  unfortunate  imitation  of 
Germany.  True,  the  details  of  the  military  reforms  in 
troduced  after  the  Ito  mission  returned  from  its  famous 
trip  of  study  through  the  Western  nations  are  wholly 
Teutonic;  and  the  military  leaders  of  to-day  were  all 
educated  in  Germany.  But  the  fact  remains  that  for 
centuries  Japan  has  been  a  military  nation  in  the  com- 
pletest  sense.  The  life  of  the  clans  was  organized  around 
the  warrior  and  chieftain.  And  the  many  old  habits  of 
thought  and  action  rooting  in  the  feudal  order  still  live. 
One  significant  survival  is  that  of  the  intense  feeling  of 
"national  honor/'  probably  more  acute  in  Japan  than 
anywhere  else  to-day.  No  European  country,  not  even 
in  its  rhetorical  moment,  thinks  of  worrying  over  na 
tional  honor  any  more.  The  war  put  an  end  to  that. 
Men  worry  now  over  the  realities — bread,  a  roof,  trousers^ 
anti-typhus  serum,  work,  and  escape  from  the  crushing 
taxes  of  war.  But  Japan  is  sensitive,  as  the  whole  con 
troversy  over  immigration  in  California  has  shown. 

All  of  these  illusions  and  many  others  which  cannot 
be  here  discussed  befog  the  entire  debate  about  Japan. 
At  almost  every  turn  statements  about  the  country  can 
be  attacked  by  the  simple  citation  of  some  law  that  has 
been  passed,  some  new  organization  that  is  running  suc 
cessfully,  or  some  fine  social  movement  that  looks  for  all 
the  world,  at  this  distance,  just  like  movements  we  know 
at  home.  And  in  many  cases  it  is  possible  to  discover 
what 's  what  only  by  going  to  Japan  and  scrutinizing  the 


52  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

things  themselves.  And  even  then  the  foreign  observer 
operates  under  a  grave  handicap  of  language  and  the 
even  graver  one  of  being  compelled  to  judge  things  by 
externals. 

So  much  for  the  faults  and  dangers  on  our  own  side. 
Let  us  now  look  at  those  very  different  ones  on  the  side 
of  the  Japanese. 


BOOK  II 
THE  SITUATION  IN  JAPAN 


CHAPTER  6 
FORM  OF  GOVERNMENT 

parallel  between  Japan  to-day  and  Germany  be- 
A  fore  1914  is  one  of  the  closest  and  most  significant  in 
all  history.  It  involves  many  more  features  than  we  have 
space  to  present  in  these  pages,  and  most  of  them  have 
not  yet  been  understood  by  even  our  more  intelligent 
classes,  let  alone  the  rank  and  file  of  citizenship.  Yet 
without  the  clearest  insight  into  these  national  resem 
blances  we  Americans  will  inevitably  misconceive  the 
needs  and  the  demands  and  the  policies  of  the  Japanese 
Government,  as  well  as  the  very  different  needs  and  de 
mands  and  policies  of  the  Japanese  people. 

The  first  likeness  between  Japan  and  pre-war  Germany 
is  to  be  found  in  the  antiquated  form  of  government  com 
mon  to  both.  The  Japanese  still  allow  themselves  to  be 
taught  in  infancy  that  the  mikado  has  been  placed  in 
power  by  God,  and  that  obedience  to  him  is  a  religious 
duty.  Listen  to  the  following  statement  by  a  Japanese 
professor,  George  Uyehara,  who  has  written  important 
works  on  Japanese  political  history : 

"The  divine  right  of  the  Emperor,  however  absurd  it  may 
seem  to  the  theorists  of  individualistic  idealism,  still  holds  a 
predominant  place  in  the  minds  of  the  Japanese;  and  its  po 
litical  value  seems  to  be  as  important  to  the  Japanese  nation  as 
the  religious  values  of  miracles  and  mythological  and  allegorical 
stories  is  to  certain  religions.  .  .  . 

55 


56  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

"This  divine  right  is  the  fundamental  principle  on  which  the 
Japanese  policy  was  first  established  and  on  which  it  still 
rests.  .  .  . 

"In  fact,  the  term  matsurigoto,  meaning  worship,  is  etymo- 
logically  in  pure  Japanese  identical  with  that  of  govern 
ment.  .  .  . 

"That  the  Mikado  reigns  and  governs  the  country  abso 
lutely  by  a  right  inherited  from  his  divine  ancestors,  is  the 
unconscious  belief  or  the  instinctive  feeling  of  the  Japanese 
people.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  to  be  their  religion — religion 
in  the  sense  of  the  'inner  voice'  as  defined  by  Matthew  Ar 
nold." 

Let  any  reader  compare  this  with  the  only  too  familiar 
chatter  of  the  former  kaiser  about  his  intimate  relations 
with  Deity  and  his  slogan, '  *  Gott  mit  Uns. ' '  Or  compare 
it  again  with  the  awe  and  servility  the  Prussian  masses 
manifested  toward  the  throne  for  many  generations. 
Japan  to-day  is  the  sole  important  survivor  of  that  gro 
tesque  theocracy  which  was  common  in  the  days  when 
all  men  were  savages. 

»  The  second  likeness  worth  noting  here  is  the  peculiar 
relation  of  the  ruling  classes  to  the  emperor  on  one  hand 
and  to  the  common  folk  on  the  other.  The  groups  who 
dominate  Japanese  political  life  array  themselves  around 
the  seven  Genro,  or  Elder  Statesmen,  each  of  whom  is 
the  commanding  figure  of  some  political  party.  The 
members  of  these  groups  are  the  shrewd  business  men, 
bankers,  large  land  owners,  and  manufacturers.  And,  of 
course,  they  embrace  the  military  and  naval  leaders, 
whose  political  power  is  unusually  well  entrenched.  On 
the  fringe  of  each  political  constellation  is  to  be  found 
a  horde  of  the  minor  bureaucrats,  from  post-office,  secret 


FORM  OF  GOVERNMENT  57 

police,  customs,  and  railways.  All  these  people  repre 
sent  the  brains  of  Japan,  or  perhaps  it  would  be  fairer 
to  say  the  trained  intelligence  of  the  country.  And  this 
group  literally  owns  and  runs  Japan.  No  estimate  has 
ever  been  made  public  as  to  the  approximate  size  of  the 
ruling  classes,  but  no  student  of  government  would  be 
inclined  to  place  it  higher  than  a  quarter  million,  and 
probably  125,000  would  come  nearer  the  truth.  Upon 
this  handful  of  patriots  the  seventy  or  more  million 
Japanese  are  utterly  dependent,  so  much  so  and  with 
such  willingness  that  they  have  a  special  word  in  Japa 
nese  to  designate  this  national  trait,  namely  Seifumanno- 
Shugi.  This  oligarchy  has  not  been  imposed  upon  the 
people  by  brute  force.  It  is  the  natural  expression  of 
their  extremely  low  political  development,  just  as  loy 
alty  to  the  Prussian  oligarchy  was  the  expression  of  the 
political  backwardness  of  the  Prussian  peasants. 

In  asserting  that  this  oligarchy  owns  and  runs  Japan 
we  are  indulging  in  no  rash  and  ill-founded  generaliza 
tion.  Every  person  who  has  made  the  slightest  survey  of 
Japanese  affairs  at  first-hand  knows  this  to  be  strictly 
true.  Japan  to-day  has  achieved  the  ideal  of  state  social 
ism  at  which  the  kaiser's  bureaucracy  aimed,  and  has 
done  so  without  the  restraint  that  is  theoretically  sup 
posed  to  be  imposed  upon  that  form  of  government  by 
way  of  forestalling  despotism.  The  Japanese  Govern 
ment,  which  is  in  reality  the  mikado  and  the  ruling 
classes  just  described,  is  not  in  any  genuine  sense  respon 
sible  to  the  people.  The  Japanese  constitution,  such  as 
it  is,  derives  its  authority  from  the  mikado  alone.  It  is 
his  to  give  and  to  take  away.  Neither  is  he  responsible 
to  the  cabinet  nor  to  the  Diet.  And  the  cabinet,  in  turn, 


58  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

is  responsible  not  to  the  people,  but  to  the  mikado.  On 
all  this  Article  TV  of  the  Japanese  Constitution  is  ad 
mirably  clear.  It  reads  thus : 

11  Tine  emperor  is  the  head  of  the  empire,  combining  in 
himself  all  the  powers  of  the  state." 

Now  it  is  well  known  that  the  mikado  himself  has  little 
to  do  with  the  labor  of  government.  He  follows  with 
virtually  no  swerving  the  advice  of  the  Elder  Statesmen. 
It  is  a  matter  of  record  that  he  has  never  overruled  these 
crown  advisers  in  any  important  matter.  We  must 
therefore  note  the  peculiar  position  of  the  Genro,  if  we 
would  understand  the  actual  management  of  Japan 
to-day. 

The  strange  and  significant  fact  about  this  small  and 
powerful  group  is  that  legally  it  is  not  a  part  of  the 
Government.  Nowhere  are  the  Elder  Statesmen  men 
tioned  in  Japanese  constitutional  law.  Neither  are  they 
attached  officially  to  the  Imperial  Family,  whose  affairs 
are  governed  by  special  laws.  In  short,  we  here  behold  a 
State  actually  ruled  by  a  recognized  group  that,  strictly 
speaking,  has  no  business  to  be  mixed  up  in  public  affairs. 
To  understand  its  status,  the  American  reader  should 
imagine  that  a  small  coterie  of  our  citizens  having  the 
highest  social  and  financial  influence  had,  by  the  mere 
force  of  social  tradition,  come  to  be  recognized  as  per 
petual  members  of  the  President's  Cabinet.  To  make  it 
quite  concrete,  let  us  suppose  that  Lawrence  Lowell,  Vin 
cent  Astor,  John  D.  Rockefeller,  and  a  few  others  had  be 
come,  not  through  coercion  nor  by  trickery  but  by  the 
established  habits  of  American  society  and  politics,  such 
fixtures  in  our  Administration.  Moreover,  conceive  that 


FORM  OF  GOVERNMENT  59 

the  President  never  ventured  to  challenge  the  decisions 
of  these  men;  that  the  American  public  instinctively 
looked  to  them,  rather  than  to  the  President  or  Congress, 
for  sound  leadership  in  every  crisis ;  and  suppose,  finally, 
that  absolutely  no  legal  machinery  existed  whereby  these 
Yankee  Genro  could  be  called  to  account  or  even  recog 
nized  as  an  entity.  Then  you  will  have  a  fair  picture  of 
the  situation  in  Japan. 

For  all  practical  purposes,  the  bureaucracy  is  as  well 
intrenched  as  the  Genro.  It  is  secure  against  almost  any 
attack,  as  well  as  against  a  "boring  from  within,"  thanks 
to  the  skill  with  which  it  has  shaped  the  civil  service  laws 
to  protect  and  perpetuate  itself.  No  government  office 
(barring  cabinet  positions  of  course)  is  open  to  anybody 
save  men  who  have  passed  civil  service  examinations  and 
worked  up  through  the  long  ranks.  This  ruling,  intro 
duced  in  1885,  has  prevented  even  the  leaders  of  the  po 
litical  parties  from  holding  official  positions.  It  is  as  if, 
in  our  own  country,  the  office  workers  in  the  Washington 
Departments  of  War,  Agriculture,  Post  Office,  and  Inte 
rior,  had  put  through  a  law  that  made  it  impossible 
for  any  Republican  or  Democrat  to  hold  any  govern 
ment  job,  except  by  going  through  the  whole  mill  of 
service. 

That  does  not  leave  much  room  for  democracy,  does  it  ? 
Nor  does  it  allow  us  to  doubt  for  very  long  who  owns  and 
runs  the  country,  especially  after  we  learn  that  the  State 
owns  and  operates  the  postal  system,  all  telephones  and 
telegraphs,  the  raihvays,  most  <of  the  gas,  water,  and  elec 
tric  plants,  the  tobacco  monopoly,  the  salt  monopoly,  and 
the  immense  camphor  industry  in  Formosa.  And,  ac 
cording  to  Japanese  economists,  most  of  the  banks,  ship- 


60  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

yards,  and  warehouses  in  the  country  are  at  least  partly 
owned  and  managed  by  the  Government. 

The  connection  between  government  and  Big  Business 
is  so  unusual  in  Japan  that  it  must  be  explained  briefly. 
In  the  Western  world  most  of  the  great  modern  indus 
trial  enterprises  were  the  creations  of  private  citizens. 
To  be  sure,  these  citizens  often  sought  and  gained  govern 
mental  aid  in  the  form  of  subsidies,  special  tariffs,  rail 
way  privileges,  exemption  from  certain  taxes,  and  so  on ; 
but  rarely,  if  ever,  dad  the  Government  inaugurate  and 
carry  through  to  a  finish  the  promotion  and  administra 
tion  of  such  concerns.  In  Japan,  though,  all  this  has 
been  the  rule. 

The  Government  has  voted  funds  for  these  immense 
industries  we  have  mentioned.  It  has  created  the  or 
ganizations  and  has  turned  the  operation  over  to  its  own 
bureaucrats.  After  things  have  been  set  well  in  motion, 
the  title  to  businesses  of  no  special  political  importance 
has  been  transferred  to  private  parties  friendly  to  the 
Genro  or  the  bureaucrats;  while  all  businesses  of  mili 
tary  or  diplomatic  value  have  been  jealously  retained. 
It  is  as  if  the  United  States  Government,  during  a  Re 
publican  administration  let  us  say,  had  gone  into  the  oil 
business;  had  taken  over  all  oil  fields,  wells,  refineries 
and  pipe  lines ;  had  turned  the  development  of  all  these 
over  to  the  clerks  and  bureau  chiefs  in  the  Department 
of  the  Interior,  which  is  reputed  to  be  one  of  the  rarest 
collection  of  fossils  in  existence;  had  found  the  poorer 
fields  of  no  military  value  and  had  therefore  turned  them 
over  to  the  friends  of  three  or  four  of  the  bureau  chiefs 
at  a  bargain  price;  and  had  kept  all  the  rest  of  the  oil 
business  permanently.  Imagine  this  procedure,  not 


FORM  OF  GOVERNMENT  61 

alone  with  oil,  but  with  steel,  telephones,  copper,  cotton, 
and  half  a  hundred  other  major  businesses ;  then  you  will 
have  some  idea  of  the  extraordinary  merger  of  bureau 
cracy  and  business  in  Japan. 

This,  as  you  will  at  once  recognize,  even  out-Prussias 
old  Prussia.  It  is  a  frank  imitation  of  Prussianism, 
begun  when  Japan  was  starting  out  to  become  a  world 
power.  And  the  accuracy  of  imitation  is  explained  by 
the  well  known  fact  that  the  Japanese  ruling  classes, 
when  confronted  by  the  huge  problem  of  organizing  their 
state  on  the  level  of  the  Western  powers,  found  in  Ger 
many  a  population  and  a  culture  and  a  religion  and  a 
political  organization  most  closely  related  to  Japan  both 
in  practice  and  in  ideals.  Thus  came  to  pass  another  imi 
tation,  which  constitutes  the  third  point  of  likeness  be 
tween  the  two  nations. 


CHAPTER  7 
CONTROL  OF  ARMY  AND  PUBLIC  OPINION 

THE  third  likeness  is  the  military  autocracy.  Japan 
sent  her  young  soldiers  of  the  upper  classes  to  Ber 
lin  for  their  military  training.  The  Japanese  Army  was 
organized  on  the  kaiser's  model.  The  Prussian  ideas 
of  discipline  were  instilled  into  rank  and  file  and  have 
been  enforced  with  much  greater  ease  than  the  Prussians 
managed,  thanks  to  the  extreme  ignorance  and  peculiar 
loyalty  of  the  ordinary  Japanese  peasant.  But  far  more 
important  than  all  this  is  the  way  the  control  of  affairs 
by  the  military  caste  has  been  fixed  upon  the  country  all 
but  irrevocably  by  the  Constitution.  In  the  Constitution 
it  is  provided  that  a  naval  officer  shall  be  alone  eligible 
to  head  the  Navy  Department  and  an  army  officer  alone 
eligible  to  head  the  War  Department.  No  surer  means 
could  have  been  devised  for  retaining  all  the  power  of 
government  in  the  hands  of  the  military  caste.  If  you 
wish  to  feel  the  full  force  of  this  caste-born  arrangement, 
imagine  our  own  War  Department  in  1918  to  have  been 
completely  dominated,  from  the  top  downward,  by  gradu 
ates  of  West  Point,  and  our  Navy  Department  similarly 
monopolized  by  the  offspring  of  Annapolis.  Every 
American  business  man  and  civilian  expert  who  during 
the  war  had  even  a  taste  of  the  mental  and  administrative 
habits  of  our  own  military  bureaucrats  knows  how  jeal- 

62 


ARMY  AND  PUBLIC  OPINION  63 

ously  they  would  have  kept  even  the  trivial  places  of 
power  within  their  own  cliques — until  Germany  had  won 
the  war  perhaps !  And  not  with  any  malice  or  treachery 
or  cheap  politics,  but  solely  through  ignorance  and  pride. 
Thus  it  was  in  Germany  until  things  began  to  go  to 
pieces.  Thus  it  is  in  Japan  to-day,  where  there  is  no 
immediate  prospect  of  a  bureaucratic  crisis. 

The  fourth  likeness  appears  in  the  technic  of  retaining 
power  through  the  systematic  shaping  and  control  of 
public  opinion.  Both  Germany  and  Japan  have  followed 
the  doctrines  which  Plato,  the  Greek  philosopher-poet, 
advocated  more  than  two  thousand  years  ago  in  his  famous 
book,  ''The  Republic."  Long  before  the  "World  War 
Japan  borrowed  from  Germany  the  Platonic  thought  that 
all  people  tend  to  act  on  the  basis  of  what  they  'believe 
to  be  the  facts  in  any  given  case;  and  hence,  if  you  wish 
to  control  people  completely  without  friction  of  any  sort, 
all  you  have  to  do  is  supply  them  with  such  facts  or  ap 
parent  facts  as  will  naturally  prompt  them  to  do  what 
you  want  them  to  do,  while  carefully  keeping  away  from 
them  all  those  other  facts  which  might  impel  them  to  act 
contrary  to  your  w-ishes. 

Plato,  who  was  interested  only  in  the  philosophy  of 
government  and  not  at  all  in  the  defending  of  any  bu 
reaucracy,  candidly  admitted  that  the  rulers  would  often 
find  it  expedient,  if  not  necessary,  to  disseminate  fictions 
or  even  downright  falsehoods,  to  which  latter  Plato  gives 
the  apologetic  name  of  " noble  lies."  The  Germans,  as 
we  all  know,  followed  this  policy  with  a  vengeance  in  a 
manner  that  would  have  caused  the  ancient  Greek  to  turn 
in  his  grave.  They  carefully  selected  the  facts  to  be 
taught  in  all  public  and  private  schools  of  Germany. 


64  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

They  glorified  the  Prussian  state  and  all  its  deeds.  They 
tinkered  liberally  with  the  political  history  of  all  coun 
tries,  so  as  to  produce  the  most  favorable  impression  of 
the  fatherland  upon  the  rising  generation.  Such  caustic 
critics  of  state  and  crown  as  the  brilliant  Heinrich  Heine 
were  taboo  not  only  to  school-children,  but  even  to  the 
teachers.  And  the  teachers  were  drilled  mercilessly  in 
the  ways  of  servile  adherence  to  every  least  tenet  of  Prus- 
sianism,  political,  military,  and  religious  alike.  Thus  it 
happened  that  the  whole  background  of  knowledge  and 
belief  which  shapes  virtually  all  of  men's  conduct  was 
cunningly  manufactured  so  that  it  would  naturally  imply 
or  suggest  loyal  thoughts  and  loyal  conduct.  The  same 
policy  was  pursued  with  the  current  information  fed  to 
adults  through  newspapers  and  magazines.  The  press 
censorship  of  Germany  before  the  war  was  strong  and 
stern.  While  it  tolerated  considerable  freedom  of  dis 
cussion  of  some  topics,  notably  since  1900,  it  was  ever 
alert  to  suppress  attacks  upon  the  fundamentals  of  Prus 
sian  power.  True,  it  frequently  failed  in  its  effort  to 
keep  the  lid  on  public  opinion,  but  this  was  through  no 
weakness  of  intent  on  the  part  of  the  ruling  classes.  It 
was  chiefly  the  result  of  the  steady  infiltration  of  bold 
and  profane  ideas  from  France,  England,  Italy,  and  even 
Russia,  all  of  which  slowly  infected  the  sluggish  political 
minds  of  tho  kaiser's  subjects. 

All  of  this  control  of  education  and  newspapers  has 
been  slavishly  copied  by  the  Japanese.  Every  child  in 
the  kingdom  is  compelled  to  learn  edicts,  poems,  and  fal 
sified  history,  all  of  which  make  the  mikado  out  to  be 
ordained  of  God,  and  the  empire  to  have  existed  since  the 
birth  of  time — only  to  mention  two  absurdities.  Basil 


ARMY  AND  PUBLIC  OPINION  65 

Hall  Chamberlain,  long  a  professor  at  the  Imperial  Uni 
versity  of  Tokio,  laid  bare  the  many  shams  of  Japanese 
text-books  some  years  ago.  In  his  brochure  entitled 
"The  Indention  of  a  New  Religion"  he  points  out  such 
interesting  items  as  follows : 

"The  first  glimmer  of  genuine  Japanese  history  dates  from 
the  fifth  century  after  Christ,  and  even  the  accounts  of  what 
happened  in  the  sixth  century  must  be  received  with  caution. 
Japanese  scholars  know  this  as  well  as  we  do;  it  is  one  of  the 
certain  results  of  investigation.  But  the  Japanese  Bureau 
cracy  does  not  desire  to  have  the  light  let  in  on  this  inconven 
ient  circumstance.  ...  It  exacts  belief  in  every  iota  of  the  na 
tional  historic  legends.  Woe  to  the  native  professor  who  strays 
from  the  path  of  orthodoxy!  His  wife  and  children  will 
starve.  .... 

<rMoral  ideals  which  were  of  common  knowledge  derived  from 
the  teachings  of  the  Chinese  sages  are  now  arbitrarily  referred 
to  the  'Imperial  Ancestors.'  ...  It  is  officially  taught  that, 
from  the  earliest  ages,  perfect  concord  has  always  subsisted 
in  Japan  between  beneficent  sovereigns  on  the  one  hand  and 
a  grateful,  loyal  people  on  the  other.  Never,  it  is  alleged,  hag 
Japan  been  soiled  by  the  disobedience  and  rebellions  com 
mitted  in  other  countries;  while  at  the  same  time  the  Japanese 
nation,  sharing  to  some  extent  in  the  supernatural  virtues  of 
its  rulers,  has  been  distinguished  by  high-minded  chivalry 
called  Busliido,  unknown  in  inferior  lands.  .  .  . 

"The  sober  fact  is  that  no  nation  probably  ever  treated  its 
sovereigns  more  cavalierly  than  the  Japanese  have  done,  from 
the  beginning  of  authentic  history  down  to  within  the  memory 
of  living  man.  Emperors  have  been  deposed;  Emperors  have 
been  assassinated;  for  centuries  every  succession  to  the  throne 
was  the  signal  for  intrigues  and  sanguinary  broils.  .  .  .  Em 
perors  have  been  exiled;  some  have  been  murdered  in 
exile.  . 


66  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

"As  for  Bushido,  it  was  unknown  until  a  decade  ago  (namely 
about  1902).  The  very  word  appears  in  no  dictionary,  native 
or  foreign,  before  the  year  1900." 

Here  we  have  a  picture  of  the  most  evil  Prussianism 
transplanted  to  the  Orient,  and  within  the  brief  span  of 
twenty  years  foisting  a  colossal  lie  upon  seventy  million 
people — a  lie,  moreover,  of  such  a  character  that  it  must 
profoundly  influence  the  action  of  those  seventy  million 
dupes  toward  all  other  countries  of  the  world,  if  ever 
Japan  comes  into  controversy  or  conflict  with  the  latter. 

The  American  reader  must  not  get  the  idea  that  such 
antiquated  doctrines  as  these  are  being  taught  as  de 
tached  items.  If  they  were,  they  would  not  survive  long. 
The  truth  is  that  they  are  conveyed  to  the  young  mind 
in  the  one  surest  and  most  convincing  form,  namely  as 
an  integral  part  of  a  whole  philosophy  of  life  and  society. 
Here  again  we  see  the  deep  influence  of  Germany. 
Japan  has  closely  followed  the  excellent  practice  of  giv 
ing  each  rising  generation  of  school  children  an  orderly 
picture  of  things  into  which  the  political  order  of  Japan 
fits  perfectly.  As  is  well  known,  Germany  adopted  the 
strange,  unearthly  philosophies  of  Kant  and  Hegel  be 
cause  they  lent  themselves  admirably  to  bolstering  the 
Prussian  aristocrats7  idea  of  what  a  perfect  State  would 
be.  And  all  students  were  compelled  to  study  the  ab 
surdities  of  German  idealism  and  political  philosophy. 
How  faithfully  Japan  has  adhered  to  this  procedure  ap 
pears  in  the  following  ordinance  of  the  Department  of 
Education : 

"The  teaching  of  morals  must  be  based  on  the  precepts  of  the 
Imperial  Rescript  of  Education;  its  object  is  to  foster  the 


ARMY  AND  PUBLIC  OPINION  67 

growth  of  moral  ideas  and  sentiments,  and  to  give  the  culture 
and  character  necessary  for  men  of  middle  or  higher  standing, 
and  to  encourage  and  promote  the  practice  of  virtues.  The 
teaching  should  be  done  by  explaining  essential  points  of 
morals  in  connection  with  the  daily  life  of  the  pupils,  by  means 
of  good  works  or  maxims  or  examples  of  good  deeds;  and  be 
followed  by  a  little  more  systematic  exposition  of  the  duties 
to  self,  to  society,  and  to  the  State." 

The  ideas  that  get  into  the  heads  of  the  common  sol 
diers  are  likewise  carefully  sorted  and  then  injected.  In 
a  recent  issue  of  "Asia"  we  come  upon  one  of  those  en 
lightening  "Letters  from  a  Japanese  Patriot"  which 
shows  the  educational  methods  of  the  barracks.  Says 
this  bold  writer: 

"Only  last  night  I  met  a  distant  relative  of  mine,  who  was 
just  back  from  three  weeks'  drill  for  the  Reserves.  I  asked 
him  what  the  men  were  talking  about  in  the  army.  'Are  they 
expecting  a  war  with  the  United  States  f  I  asked. 

"After  shaking  his  head  dubiously  half  a  dozen  times,  he 
said: —  'Well,  every  time  the  officers  give  us  lectures  they 
say:  "Soldiers,  we  have  got  to  be  prepared,  for  a  mightier 
war  is  coming!  The  whole  world  is  hating  our  glorious  Em 
pire!  America  hates  us  most  of  all!  We  cannot  rely  even 
on  our  once-trusted  ally,  England!  And  why?  Do  any  of 
you  soldiers  know?  Surely,  you  ought  to  know.  It  is  simply 
because  we  are  so  strong  and  great !  It  is  jealousy !  It  is  the 
same  old  desire  of  the  White  Race  to  dominate  the  whole 
world !  Now,  then,  soldiers,  think !  What  are  you  going  to  do 
about  it?"' 

"  'Well/  I  asked  this  distant  relative  soldier,  'what  are  you 
going  to  do  about  it?' 

"  'Really  I  don't  know,'  he  said.  'But  in  the  fenny,  as  you 
know,  we've  got  to  listen  to  whatever  the  officers  say.' 


68  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

"'So?  said  I.  'That  was  exactly  the  way  things  were 
handled  in  the  German  army.  That  was  exactly  the  way  the 
German  soldiers  went  blindly  to  the  front  to  be  fed  to  the 
cannon !' " 

In  fairness  to  the  Japanese  it  should  be  added  that  this 
is  just  the  sort  of  thing  that  officers  are  saying  to  Ameri 
can  sailors  and  marines  in  all  the  Pacific  Coast  bases. 

A  similar  account  might  be  given,  with  a  wealth  of 
detail,  about  the  official  propaganda  of  Japan  and  the 
censorship.  Every  magazine  and  newspaper  in  the  coun 
try  is  licensed  and  regularly  inspected  by  the  censorship, 
which  is  more  stringent  than  the  Prussians  have  dared  to 
be  in  recent  years.  And  the  knowledge  which  foreigners 
acquire  about  Japan  is  shaped  to  a  remarkable  degree 
by  the  skilful,  ingenious,  and  richly  financed  chain  of 
press  bureaus  and  societies.  Indeed,  most  journalists 
regard  Japan's  peaceful  propaganda  in  foreign  lands  as 
the  last  word  in  that  art,  exceeding  even  the  French  and 
the  Americans,  who  like  to  consider  themselves  the  clever 
est  self -advertisers  on  earth. 

The  bulk  of  news  coming  from  Japan  is  collected,  ed 
ited,  and  distributed  by  the  Kokusai,  the  Japanese  na 
tional  news  agency,  under  the  management  of  J.  Russell 
Kennedy,  who  is  also  the  publisher  of  the  Japan  ' '  Times 
and  Mail, ' '  through  which  the  Japanese  Government  pre 
sents  news  to  English-speaking  residents.  Every  ob 
server  agrees  that  the  Kokusai  is  a  skilful  news-colorist 
and  an  efficient  suppressor  of  unpleasant  facts.  It  is 
not  such  a  monumental  liar  as  the  French  news-fakers, 
who  have  been  busily  humbugging  Americans  through 
our  most  respectable  journals  ever  since  the  armistice. 
Neither  is  it  as  malicious  as  the  Bolshevik  propaganda. 


ARMY  AND  PUBLIC  OPINION  69 

Its  activities  seem  to  be  more  like  those  of  our  own  Com 
mittee  of  Public  Information  during  the  war;  it  sends 
out  pleasant  stories,  hushes  up  gloom,  and  generally  ad 
vertises  Japan  and  its  Government  as  a  set  of  jolly  good 
fellows.  In  short,  it  follows  almost  the  same  policy  as 
any  publicity  agent  does  in  booming  a  movie  star  or  a 
railroad.  And  we  Americans,  of  all  people  on  earth, 
have  the  least  right  to  condemn  it ;  for  the  Kokusai  has 
merely  imitated  our  most  prominent  commercial  adver 
tisers  in  sincere  admiration. 

The  progressive  Japanese,  however,  are  growing  more 
than  restive  under  the  system.  They  are  saying  things 
about  it  that  are  enlightening.  In  a  recent  article  on 
"  Stumbling  Blocks  to  the  Growth  of  Democracy  in 
Japan,"  the  "Asahi,"  a  Tokio  newspaper  of  wide  influ 
ence,  bursts  forth  as  follows : 

"The  greater  the  misrule  of  the  Government,  the  more  nu 
merous  are  press  embargoes.  The  last  Cabinet  prohibited  all 
mention  in  the  press  of  the  rice  riots  which  constituted  the 
largest  blot  on  the  Government's  escutcheon,  but  the  down 
fall  of  the  Cabinet  on  that  issue  could  not  be  prevented.  At 
the  time  when  the  present  Cabinet  was  formed,  it  appeared 
that  the  authorities  had  a  more  proper  notion  of  the  freedom 
of  speech,  but  during  the  eighteen  months  it  has  continued  in 
office  many  mistakes  have  been  made,  and  press  embargoes 
have  greatly  increased  of  late.  The  embargoes  which  stand 
good  at  the  present  time  number  no  less  than  38,  of  which  17 
refer  to  Korean  affairs,  and  these  figures  do  not  include  the 
embargoes  issued  by  the  police  and  judicial  authorities  in  con 
nection  with  the  search  or  examination  of  criminals;  they  have 
all  been  issued  by  administrative  offices.  As  to  Korean  af 
fairs,  almost  everything  is  tabooed,  and  the  Japanese  are  thus 
blindf  olded  as  to  the  situation  in  Korea.  It  is  no  wonder  that 


70  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Korean  rule  should  be  growing  worse.  The  greatest  defect 
of  the  existing  Press  Law  is  that  the  authorities  are  em 
powered  to  take  severe  punitive  measures  under  the  abstract 
and  elastic  phrase  'for  the  disturbance  of  peace  and  order/ 
This  stipulation  is  due  to  the  autocratic  spirit  of  the  bu 
reaucrats,  and  is  irrefragably  at  variance  with  the  spirit  of 
constitutionalism  which  respects  freedom  of  speech.  It  is  very 
dangerous  that  such  a  stipulation  should  be  used  and  abused 
by  the  Government  at  its  own  convenience.  It  may  even  be 
said  that  it  is  these  authorities  who  endanger  peace  and  order. 
The  Home  Minister  is  nominally  responsible  for  the  control 
of  speech,  but  it  is  petty  police  officials  who  do  the  actual 
task." 

Largely  as  the  result  of  the  world's  ignorance  of 
Japan,  Japan's  vast  distance  from  the  Western  world, 
and  the  discouraging  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  Euro 
pean  or  American  who  seeks  to  learn  about  Japan  by 
reading  Japanese  books  and  papers,  the  foreign  propa 
ganda  of  that  island  empire  has  until  very  recently  had 
things  pretty  much  its  own  way  in  creating  a  favorable 
opinion  of  Japan  throughout  the  white  world.  It  is  only 
since  the  scandalous  procedures  of  Japan  and  her  un 
scrupulous  allies  with  regard  to  China  at  the  peace  con 
ference  that  men  have  begun  to  grow  uneasy  as  to  the 
plans  and  morals  of  official  Japan,  and  are  now  listening 
to  such  scathing  critics  as  Thomas  F.  Millar d,  editor  of 
"Millard's  Review"  (Shanghai),  who  for  years  has  been 
bringing  to  the  public  attention  news  about  the  Japa 
nese  ruling  classes  that  has  been  most  distasteful  to  these 
gentlemen.  To  intensify  this  suspicion,  there  has  been 
added  since  the  peace  conference  a  profound  reaction 
against  all  forms  of  official  publicity.  Even  readers 
below  the  average  of  intelligence  now  understand  that 


ARMY  AND  PUBLIC  OPINION  71 

their  newspapers,  and  to  a  lesser  degree  their  magazines,  [ 
have  been  filled  with  lies  foisted  on  the  unhappy  editors 
by  wily  press  agents  of  foreign  powers  and  political 
cliques.  All  of  which  has  upset  Japan 's  publicity  plans, 
along  with  those  of  many  another.  None  the  less,  the 
parallel  between  Japan  and  pre-war  Prussia  still  endures. 
And  it  must  continue  as  long  as  Japan  Js  present  political 
system  does;  for  an  institution  founded  on  fictions  can 
be  preserved  only  by  preserving  that  foundation. 


CHAPTER  8 
OVERPOPULATION 

THE  fifth  likeness  between  Japan  and  Germany  is  an 
economic  and  geographic  one.    Both  of  these  em 
pires  adjoin  the  largest  undeveloped  territory  on  earth ; 
namely,   Russia.     The  significance  of  this  will  appear 
after  we  have  considered  some  further  similarities. 

The  sixth  likeness  lies  in  the  overpopulation  of  both 
countries.  Before  1914  Germany  had  passed  the  point 
at  which  it  was  possible  for  her  inhabitants  to  raise  food 
for  themselves  in  sufficient  quantities.  As  a  result  of  the 
enormous  influx  into  German  cities,  thanks  to  the  tremen 
dous  stimulation  of  manufacturing  by  government  aid, 
the  cost  of  food  distribution,  and  hence  of  food  to  the  con 
sumer,  was  rising  out  of  proportion  to  the  increase  in 
wages.  Germany  also  had  on  her  hands  a  peculiar  prob 
lem  of  overpopulation  that  has  never  yet  appeared  else 
where;  she  had  an  immense  and  disquieting  surplus  of 
highly  trained  professional  and  technical  men.  Twenty 
years  ago  this  excess  began  to  cause  worry.  The  huge 
educational  system  of  Germany  was  producing  more  engi 
neers,  electrical  engineers,  surveyors,  industrial  chemists, 
and  other  experts  than  the  nation's  employers  could  ab 
sorb.  The  result  was  that  the  pay  of  such  men  dropped 
and  dropped  until,  in  1910,  some  classes  of  engineers 
holding  degrees  from  the  Charlottenburg  Polytechnik, 
one  of  the  finest  engineering  colleges  in  the  world,  were 

72 


OVERPOPULATION  73 

getting  the  pay  of  street-car  conductors.     The  discontent 
of  such  an  " intellectual  proletariat"  was  no  slight  factor 
in  shaping  the  German  program  of  expansion.     It  re-    /?  » 
mains    to    be    seen    whether    a    similar    "intellectual   /  * 
proletariat"  will  arise  in  Japan  out  of  her  abnormal  in-  7 
dustrial  expansion. 

Already  her  thousands  of  school  teachers  are  strug 
gling  on  salaries  beside  which  the  $600  a  year  that  our 
country  schoolma'ams  get  is  princely  indeed.  And  un 
less  some  revolutionary  improvement  in  Japan's  whole 
economic  system  occurs,  she  will  soon  have  another  army 
of  pauper  wise  men  on  her  hands. 

That  Japan  is  seriously  overpopulated  has  been  ques 
tioned  by  several  recent  investigators.  But  when  we  look 
closely  into  the  reasons  for  their  doubts,  we  see  that  an 
important  fact  has  been  omitted  from  their  considera 
tions.  The  Keport  of  the  California  State  Board  of  Con 
trol  on  "California  and  the  Oriental,"  the  latest  and 
most  trustworthy  study  of  the  whole  subject,  refers  to 
the  findings  of  the  Japanese  Department  of  Agriculture 
and  Commerce  concerning  undeveloped  acreage  in  the 
island  empire  and  draws  conclusions  that  are  not  at  all 
sound.  This  department,  two  years  ago,  completed  a 
survey  of  Japanese  farm-lands  which  brought  to  light 
five  million  acres  of  now  unused  soil  which  can  be  re 
claimed  without  the  introduction  of  any  radically  new 
agricultural  methods.  It  also  appeared  that  the  Japa 
nese,  unlike  the  Chinese  and  the  Filipino  hill  tribes,  do 
not  understand  the  development  of  hillsides  in  farming. 
They  are  valley  folk,  to  whom  the  amazing  technic  of 
terracing  and  mountain  tillage  that  we  find  among  the 
Igorots  of  Luzon  and  the  Chinese  is  a  sealed  book.  The 


74  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

official  survey  reveals  that  simply  by  reclaiming  and  cul 
tivating  the  land  which  is  inclined  at  an  angle  of  less 
than  fifteen  degrees  Japan  could  double  the  area  of  her 
arable  land. 

Now,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  this  sounds  as  if  she 
could  easily  spread  her  millions  over  twice  their  present 
area  and  double  their  food  supply.  But  some  other  facts, 
all  well  known  and  beyond  dispute,  rob  this  one  of  its 
supposed  significance  and  go  to  prove  the  usual  assertion 
that  the  country  is  grossly  over-crowded  and  far  from 
self-supporting.  These  facts  are  a  matter  of  geography, 
climate,  and  racial  traits. 

In  the  first  place,  about  five  sixths  of  all  Japan  is  wild 
mountainous  country,  most  of  which  is  very  cold  and  raw 
and  forever  untillable.  Thus  the  productive  area,  both 
actual  and  possible  combined,  represents  only  one  square 
mile  out  of  every  six  in  the  empire. 

In  the  second  place,  the  great  bulk  of  the  still  unde 
veloped  tillable  land  lies  in  Hokkaido,  the  northerly  part 
of  the  country,  lying  in  the  same  general  latitude  as 
Vladivostok.  This  whole  region  is,  in  comparison  with 
the  rest  of  Japan,  still  thinly  populated  despite  the  avail 
able  acreage  it  contains.  But  this  is  not  by  accident  or 
oversight.  It  is  the  natural  result  of  a  racial  peculiarity 
which  has  manifested  itself  elsewhere.  The  Japanese 
have  been  for  thousands  of  years  concentrated  in  the 
milder  southern  stretches  of  their  archipelago,  where  they 
have  by  long  group  inbreeding  and  natural  selection  nar 
rowly  adapted  themselves  to  the  living  conditions  of  that 
region.  As  a  consequence,  they  evince  a  strong  dislike, 
and  something  of  an  inability,  to  thrive  in  either  very 
hot  or  very  cold  climates. 


OVERPOPULATION  75 

This  is  not  a  matter  of  speculation.  It  has  been  clearly 
demonstrated  on  a  grand  scale  during  the  last  twenty 
years.  After  the  opening  of  Manchuria,  the  Japanese 
Government  exerted  itself  to  direct  its  citizens  into  that 
immense  territory.  Although  something  more  than  a 
quarter  million  Japanese  have  emigrated  thither  up  to 
date,  the  movement  is  generally  regarded  as  a  failure  in 
the  larger  sense ;  for  it  has  developed  that  the  more  pro 
gressive  of  these  emigrants  do  not  stay  long,  on  account 
of  the  bitter  winters,  while  those  who  do  remain  prove 
quite  unable  to  compete  with  the  northern  Chinese  there, 
largely  because  the  latter  can  and  do  work  well  under 
the  harsh  climatic  conditions  of  those  inland  continental 
plains.  From  a  biological  point  of  view  this  is  precisely 
what  one  should  expect.  A  species  that  has  adapted  it 
self  to  a  very  equable  oceanic  climate  for  hundreds  of 
generations,  be  this  climate  hot  or  cold,  would  be  more 
or  less  upset  if  shifted  suddenly  to  a  highly  variable  cli 
mate  such  as  Manchuria 's,  where  midsummer  heat  mounts 
to  the  nineties  and  midwinter  nights  drop  to  forty  below 
zero. 

The  experiment  of  transplanting  the  Japanese  to  a 
tropical  region  has  likewise  failed.  In  1909  the  Japa 
nese  Government  began  colonizing  Formosa,  but  it  has 
not  succeeded  appreciably  despite  the  150,000  Japanese 
who  have  taken  up  residence  in  that  hot  and  depress 
ing^  humid  island.  It  is  not  the  climate  alone,  how 
ever,  which  has  hampered  success  here;  the  very  large 
Chinese  and  aboriginal  population  has  stood  in  the  way 
of  making  the  region  a  home  for  Japan 's  surplus  folk. 

In  the  third  place,  the  true  density  of  Japan's  popu 
lation  is  not  generally  appreciated.  The  usual  method 


76  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

of  figuring  density  is  to  divide  the  gross  population  by 
the  gross  area.  Thus,  Japan  has  about  350  people  to 
the  square  mile.  This  is  only  a  little  greater  density 
than  Italy 's  and  considerably  less  than  Belgium 's.  Even 
this  superficial  comparison,  if  properly  interpreted, 
would  point  to  Japan 's  grave  congestion ;  for  Italy,  with 
326  per  square  mile,  has  been  overpopulated  for  a  gen 
eration  and  has  sent  forth  immense  floods  of  her  best 
farmers  and  city  toilers  to  North  and  South  America,  to 
northern  Africa,  and  to  the  Near  East ;  and,  according  to 
most  observers,  will  have  to  go  on  doing  this  indefinitely 
unless  the  Italians  themselves  adopt  some  organized  form 
of  birth  control,  which  is  highly  improbable.  And  so 
with  Belgium.  This  little  land  is  a  model  of  what  a 
country  should  not  be  in  matters  of  population  and 
standards  of  living.  To  be  sure,  it  has  adapted  itself 
ingeniously  to  its  appalling  crowds  of  overworked,  under- 
educated,  and  rather  sodden  toilers;  but,  then,  so  have 
the  Chinese.  And,  whatever  we  may  think  about  the 
development  of  Belgium's  agriculture  in  close  coordina 
tion  with  its  industrial  life,  the  fact  remains  that  the 
country  has  more  people  than  it  can  feed.  And  that  is 
all  that  we  are  now  considering. 

Now,  to  return  to  Japan's  350  people  per  square  mile, 
this  figure  is  misleading.  We  see  its  true  nature  when 
we  recall  that  five  sixths  of  all  Japan  is  wild  and  untill- 
able.  On  this  five  sixths  of  the  land  few  men  live.  So 
we  may  say  roughly  that  Japan's  total  population  is 
packed  into  about  one  sixth  of  her  total  area,  so  that 
from  the  point  of  view  of  density  as  well  as  of  food  sup 
plies,  the  true  or  effective  density  of  population  is  six 
times  that  indicated  by  the  statistics.  Japan  is  there- 


OVERPOPULATION  77 

fore  actually  supporting  more  than  two  thousand  human 
beings  to  the  inhabited  and  tillable  square  mile. 

In  other  words,  the  entire  country  has,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  food  supplies,  almost  reached  the  condition 
which  has  prevailed  in  Shantung,  which  is  China's  most 
thickly  settled  province.  In  Shantung  there  are  many 
farms  on  which,  according  to  the  first-hand  observations 
of  such  a  trained  student  of  agriculture  as  F.  H.  King, 
author  of  ' '  The  Farmers  of  Forty  Centuries, ' '  one  square 
mile  of  soil  is  supporting  3,072  persons,  256  cows,  256 
donkeys,  and  512  pigs. 

There  are  about  5,500,000  families  working  farms  in 
Japan,  and  these  cultivate  an  average  of  a  little  less  than 
3  acres  each.  This  means  that,  in  1920,  one  acre  has  to 
feed  nearly  four  persons.  In  Hokkaido,  where  land  is 
relatively  undeveloped  according  to  the  amazing  Japa 
nese  standards,  the  acreage  per  family  is  about  7%  acres. 

More  than  one-half  of  the  total  15,000,000  acres  is  de 
voted  to  raising  rice.  Even  with  such  huge  plantings, 
though,  there  are  6,000,000  Japanese  who  must  buy  their 
rice  from  foreign  countries.  This  has  led  to  the  present 
new  reclamation  project  of  the  Imperial  Government  to 
make  available,  within  the  next  nine  years,  250,000  cho 
of  waste  land — or  about  6,250,000  acres.  Of  this  total, 
which  is  estimated  to  exhaust  the  total  acreage  of  possible 
farm  land,  only  one-half  or  thereabouts  can  ever  be  made 
fit  to  grow  rice,  regardless  of  the  pains  taken  in  improv 
ing  it. 

While  these  efforts  to  increase  crop  acreage  are  going 
on,  we  see  no  less  than  18,500  acres  of  good  land  being 
taken  away  from  farmers  for  the  construction  of  roads, 
railways,  irrigation  ditches,  houses  and  factories.  In  a 


78  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

land  like  the  United  States  such  a  tract  would  be  negli 
gible.     In  Japan  it  is  a  serious  matter. 

There  is  another  aspect  of  farming  which  must  be 
stressed  here,  for  it  has  a  vital  bearing  upon  the  interna 
tional  crisis.  According  to  a  statement  in  the  Japan 
Year  Book  by  Dr.  Sato,  President  of  the  Imperial  Hok 
kaido  University,  the  tenant  farmers  of  the  country  cul 
tivate  such  small  areas  that  even  with  their  immense 
labor,  they  do  not  make  enough  money  from  their  crops 
alone  to  keep  themselves  alive.  They  are  obliged  to  carry 
on  other  work  such  as  growing  silk  worms,  making  straw 
ware,  charcoal  burning,  starch  making,  and  so  on;  and 
in  all  this  they  have  to  press  their  wives  and  children 
into  service.  Thus  we  find  agriculture  and  home  indus 
try  completely  interlocked  and  each  conducted  on  a  basis 
that  would  support  nobody  if  handled  alone.  In  this 
evil  situation,  be  it  noted  in  passing,  lies  the  cause  of 
the  abnormally  cheap  production  of  the  simpler  products 
of  handicraft  in  Japan.  The  parallel  between  this  and 
the  early  stages  of  the  "industrial  revolution"  in  Eng 
land  is  obvious  and  significant. 

Plainly,  then,  Japan  is  much  more  congested  than  pre 
war  Germany  was,  or,  for  that  matter,  than  any  Euro 
pean  country  was.  Hence  whatever  force  the  density  of 
population  may  have  been  in  causing  Germany  to  do  what 
she  did  in  1914,  that  force  must  be  operative  in  Japan, 
and  probably  to  a  much  more  marked  degree.  Before 
passing  on  to  our  next  comparison,  it  may  be  worth  while 
to  ask  when  the  final  crisis  of  overpopulation  is  likely  to 
come  in  Japan.  We  may  set  the  year  1960  as  a  very 
conservative  date  for  this  crisis.  We  do  this  on  the 
basis  of  two  facts:  (1)  the  present  annual  increase  of 


OVERPOPULATION  79 

Japan's  population  is  between  600,000  and  700,000,  and 
(2)  the  reclaimable  acreage  within  Japan  will  pro 
vide,  at  a  maximum,  for  feeding  about  thirty  million 
more  people  at  the  rate  of  four  persons  to  the  acre. 
These  facts  make  it  theoretically  possible  for  the  country 
to  provide  for  its  natural  growth  by  one  makeshift  or 
another  for  forty  more  years.  It  is  plain,  of  course,  that 
during  those  forty  years  many  Japanese  will  doubtless 
leave  the  country,  but  to  offset  this  emigration  we  must 
reckon  with  two  other  facts  of  vast  importance.  There 
is  the  strong  antipathy  of  the  natives  toward  life  in 
Hokkaido,  where  the  bulk  of  the  unused  soil  lies;  and 
there  is  also  the  conspicuous  and  steady  rise  in  the 
standards  of  living  all  over  Japan,  as  elsewhere  in  the 
world.  Both  of  these  facts  must  powerfully  hasten  the 
day  when  the  country  will  no  longer  be  able  to  place  and 
feed  men  on  new  lands  within  her  present  insular  boun 
daries. 

There  is  another  aspect  of  this  matter  that  may  be  en 
lightening,  and  that  is  the  economic  difficulties  in  the  way 
of  utilizing  the  undeveloped  acreage  of  Japan.  These 
have  been  left  wholly  out  of  the  reckoning  not  only  by 
the  California  State  Board  of  Control,  but  also  by  the 
investigators  working  under  the  Inter-Church  World 
Movement  in  Japan.  And  the  omission  completely  dis 
torts  the  picture. 

Japanese  agriculture  long  ago  reached  the  point  at 
which  the  law  of  diminishing  returns  began  to  work  with 
a  vengeance.  As  in  every  other  part  of  the  world,  so  in 
Japan,  the  best  land  was  tilled  first,  then  the  next  best, 
and  so  on,  as  the  population  grew.  To-day  the  only  un 
used  acres  are  far  back  in  all  but  inaccessible  mountain 


80  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

valleys,  or  they  are  badly  drained  or  their  soil  is  stub 
born  ;  so  that  in  any  case  the  amount  of  labor  needed  to 
bring  them  up  to  profitable  cropping  and  to  handle  the 
products  from  field  to  market  is  enormous.  Already  in 
Japan  the  sheer  volume  of  human  effort  put  into  many  a 
field  is  appalling.  Robertson  Scott,  the  British  journal 
ist,  who  has  lately  completed  a  tour  of  inspection  through 
the  farming  districts  of  Japan,  gives  us  a  vivid  and  de 
tailed  picture  of  the  desperate  and  all  but  futile  strug 
gles  of  the  Japanese  farmers  to  wring  a  livelihood  from 
the  poorer  lands  in  the  northern  prefectures.  Writing 
in  "Asia"  (from  October  to  December,  1920),  Mr.  Scott 
tells  of  his  observations  in  such  districts  as  Iwate  and 
Miyagi.  What  he  tells  us  ought  to  be  a  warning  to  all 
those  arm-chair  statisticians  and  advisers  who  think  of 
such  intensely  human  and  tremendously  intricate  ques 
tions  as  food  supply,  agriculture,  and  population  merely 
in  terms  of  arithmetic. 

Farming  conditions  in  most  of  the  regions  not  yet 
densly  populated  and  intensively  developed  are  extremely 
bad,  Mr.  Scott  finds.  The  east  coast  north  of  Tokio  is 
chilled  by  a  polar  sea  current  and  cursed  with  barren  soil. 
Only  one  farmer  in  ten  here  ever  saves  any  money,  and  in 
bad  times  sixty-five  per  cent,  of  the  families  are  estimated 
to  fall  into  debt.  The  wretched  population  exists  chiefly 
upon  buckwheat  and  millet,  for  rice  will  not  grow  well 
enough  to  warrant  planting  much  of 'it.  In  Iwate,  the 
most  northerly  part  of  Nippon,  Mr.  Scott  reports  that  as 
many  as  forty  per  cent,  of  the  people  are  barely  making 
ends  meet,  while  another  forty  per  cent,  are  always 
dogged  by  poverty.  Every  year  about  seven  thousand 
farmers  get  out  and  try  their  luck  in  Hokkaido,  which, 


OVERPOPULATION  81 

although  farther  north,  does  have  some  slight  advan 
tages,  such  as  good  timber  and  the  opportunity  for  ac 
quiring  larger  land-holdings.  More  than  one  thousand 
of  these  emigrants  return  annually  and  report  failure  in 
the  northern  island. 

Even  in  more  favored  southerly  districts,  where  the 
climate  is  good,  the  partly  undeveloped  hill  regions  and 
the  remoter  valleys  show  how  hard  it  is  to  utilize  the  last 
twenty-five  per  cent,  of  the  theoretically  tillable  acreage 
in  a  country.  Mr.  Scott  was  informed  by  an  agricultural 
expert  in  Akita,  which  lies  on  the  warmer  northwest 
coast,  that  between  fifty-five  and  sixty  per  cent,  of  all 
farmers  in  that  district  had  an  annual  income  of  about 
$150  per  family,  about  twenty-five  per  cent,  had  about 
$75,  which  is  the  very  least  on  which  bare  existence  is 
possible  there ;  and  three  per  cent,  or  more  of  the  farm 
hands  earned  less  than  $75  a  year. 

The  city  reader,  surveying  these  ghastly  figures,  may 
be  tempted  to  say:  "Ah,  yes,  this  is  terrible;  but  these 
farmers  ought  to  cultivate  more  intensively.  Then  they 
would  earn  more/'  This  is  the  usual  advice  which  the 
man  who  does  not  know  the  difference  between  a  hoe  and 
a  harrow  is  always  ready  to  give  the  farmer.  The  farmer 
fortunately  knows  that  it  is  nonsense.  In  the  first  place, 
intensive  cultivation  is  expensive  and  always  means  rela 
tively  small  profits,  as  will  be  shown  in  a  later  chap 
ter  of  this  volume.  In  the  second  place,  the  Japanese 
farmer  in  these  regions  is  a  past  master  in  intensive  cul 
tivation  and  has  actually  doubled  the  acre  yield  of  rice 
in  Akita  in  the  last  thirty  years,  a  remarkable  achieve 
ment,  as  any  farmer  must  perceive.  And,  in  the  third 
place,  the  amount  of  labor  and  capital  required  to  bring 


82  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

the  poorer  acreage  under  cultivation  is  so  great  that  there 
must  always  be  relatively  less  labor  and  capital  left  out 
of  the  total  available  for  the  actual  cultivation  itself. 

The  history  of  the  rice  crop  and  rice  prices  in  Japan 
clearly  confirms  all  this.     In  the  last  twenty  years  the 
market  price  of  this  food  staple  has  steadily  moved  up 
from  forty-seven  cents  to  seven  dollars  per  bushel.     In 
deed  the  price  of  rice  in  Japan  is  higher  now  than  it  is 
in  America.     Katagiri  Brothers,  New  York  importers, 
on  December  24,  1920,  stated  that  rice  in  Japan  was  then 
retailing  at  16  sen  a  pound,  which  equals  about  $5  a 
bushel.     To-day  the  Japanese  workman  pays  fourteen 
times  as  much  for  his  food  as  he  paid  in  1900.     During 
this  same  period  his  wages,  on  the  average,  have  increased 
from  $6.50  to  $26  per  month,  or.  fourfold.     On  the  most 
liberal  basis  of  computation  we  can  allow  not  more  than 
two  hundred  of  the  fourteen  hundred  per  cent,  increase  in 
the  rice  cost  as  being  due  to  money  inflation.     Thus  we 
are  left  with  an  enormous  margin  of  increase  which  can 
be  accounted  for  in  only  three  ways,  either  by  downright 
profiteering,  by  a  disproportionate  increase  in  the  world 
demand  for  rice,  or  finally  by  the  steadily  mounting  cost 
of  production  as  a  result  of  more  intensive  cultivation  of 
the  paddies  and  the  expensive  development  of  new  and 
poorer  acreage.     "We  may  dismiss  profiteering  as  being 
a  trifling  factor  except  during  the  last  two  years;  rice 
is  grown  and  dealt  in  by  too  many  small  farmers  and 
dealers  to  make  flagrant  profiteering  possible  outside  of 
the  larger  cities.     As  for  the  influence  of  foreign  demand 
upon  the  Japanese  prices,  it  cannot  have  been  very  great ; 
for,  when  we  consult  the  records  of  Japanese  exports,  we 
find  that  a  minimal  quantity  of  the  staple  leaves  the 


OVERPOPULATION  83 

country.  In  1919,  for  instance,  with  a  rice  crop  of  about 
300,009,000  bushels,  Japan  sent  abroad  about  300,000 
bushels,  or  a  mere  one  thousandth  of  her  yield.  In  the 
same  year  she  imported,  chiefly  from  French  Indo-China 
and  Siam,  about  11,000,000  bushels.  Thus  it  is  clear  that 
the  domestic  price  of  the  staple  is  determined  chiefly  by 
domestic  conditions,  and  of  these  latter  it  is  pretty 
clearly  the  inevitable  rise  in  production  cost  that  has 
wrought  the  trouble.  Too  many  farmers  toiling  on  an 
acre,  too  many  stubborn  acres  being  coaxed  to  yield  their 
crops !  In  many  parts  of  Japan  where  the  hillside  acre 
age  is  good  for  rice  as  far  as  the  soil  goes,  the  cost  of 
bringing  to  it  the  enormous  amount  of  water  that  this 
crop  requires  is  prohibitive.  To  extend  farming,  there 
fore,  means  to  lower  the  standing  of  living  for  the 
farmer;  for  it  involves  an  increase  in  the  time  spent  in 
the  mere  struggle  for  food. 

"With  a  rising  standard  of  tastes,  is  it  any  wonder  that 
the  Japanese  look  abroad  for  farms,  or  that  they  are  fast, 
coming  to  hate  us  Americans  for  what  seems  to  them  to 
be  our  hoggishness?  Nobody  can  grasp  the  psychology 
of  the  Japanese-American  crisis  until  he  has  realized  the 
full  force  of  the  impression  which  America  makes  upon  a 
Japanese  peasant.  The  hundred  thousand  Japanese  toil 
ers  in  California  see  colossal  stretches  of  empty  land  in 
the  Sacramento  and  San  Joaquin  valleys,  most  of  it  so 
rich  that  it  requires  no  manure  or  fertilizer  for  years  to 
come.  They  observe  thousands  of  small  farmers  who  are 
both  inefficient  and  lazy  when  measured  by  Japanese 
standards.  They  cannot  help  thinking  of  the  millions  of 
young  men  and  women  back  home  in  Nippon  who  could 
build  up  this  white  man's  empire  faster  and  better  than 


84  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

the  white  man  is  building  it,  but  who  are  barred  from  it 
by  the  white  man's  fear.  And  they  know  that,  at  the 
most  conservative  estimate,  Japan  to-day  holds  fully  five 
million  men  and  youths  for  whom  war  of  any  kind  would 
mean  a  happier  existence,  better  food  and  more  of  it, 
easier  hours  of  work,  and  above  all  the  first  and  the  only 
opportunity  in  their  lives  for  winning  a  home  and  a  de 
cent  livelihood  by  some  foreign  conquest.  When  we 
think  of  the  Japanese  issue,  let  us  not  leave  this  stagger 
ing  fact  out  of  our  reckoning. 


CHAPTER  9 
WAGES  AND   EXPLOITATION 

THE  seventh  likeness  between  Japan  and  pre-war 
Germany  is  a  direct  consequence  of  over-population. 
It  is  the  presence  of  enormous  masses  of  cheap  labor,  and 
hence  of  abnormal  industrial  expansion.  When  we  speak  , 
of  cheap  labor  we  mean  relatively  cheap.  And  by  ab 
normal  industrial  expansion  we  mean  not  necessarily  un 
wise  or  unwholesome  development,  but  rather  an  ex 
pansion  which  goes  on  more  rapidly  than  the  other  in 
terlocking  economic  and  social  processes,  and  which  there 
fore  tends  to  throw  everything  out  of  gear,  at  least  for  a 
time.  This  disturbance,  studied  in  retrospect,  may  prove 
to  be  merely  " growing  pains." 

As  for  Germany,  the  facts  about  her  cheap  labor  and 
colossal  industrial  expansion  are  so  familiar  that  we  need 
not  recount  them  here.  Enough  to  observe  that  prior  to 
1910  the  wages  of  the  unskilled  worker  in  Germany  ran 
from  one  third  to  one  fifth  of  those  in  the  United  States, 
measured  in  terms  of  the  buying  power  of  money  in  the 
two  countries;  while  the  skilled  German  was  receiving 
from  one  half  to  one  third  as  much  as  the  skilled  Yankee. 
This  is  a  very  rough  comparison,  of  course.  The  wages 
differed  tremendously  from  trade  to  trade,  according  to 
local  variations  in  supply  and  demand.  None  the  less, 
they  give  a  fair  general  ratio. 

85 


86  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

How  about  Japan?  As  this  matter  of  wages  bears 
upon  almost  all  of  the  political  and  social  difficulties  of 
that  country,  including  her  relations  with  China  and  the 
United  States,  we  must  consider  it  in  some  detail. 

Since  1900  the  level  of  wages  in  Japan  has  risen  from 
one  to  four  hundred  per  cent.  The  most  recent  com 
plete  statistics  were  compiled  three  years  ago  and  show 
that,  despite  the  great  advance  both  absolutely  and  in 
buying  power,  the  Japanese  are  still  even  further  be 
low  the  American  level  than  the  Germans  were  before  the 
war.  We  find  that  in  1917  the  average  wages  in  thirty- 
three  occupations  in  Japan  were  thirty  cents  per  day, 
American  money.  Bricklayers  received  sixty-one  cents, 
the  highest  wage,  while  farm  women  drew  seventeen 
cents,  the  lowest  wage.  Skilled  artisans  in  all  lines  av 
eraged  forty-seven  cents.  Textile  workers  received 
twenty-eight  and  one  half  cents  if  men,  and  nineteen 
cents  if  women;  and  for  this  wage  more  than  a  million 
of  them  were  working  from  eleven  to  fourteen  hours  a 
day.  To  form  an  idea  of  the  buying  power  of  these 
pitiful  wages,  double  them  and  compute  what  the  product 
would  purchase  three  years  ago  in  an  ordinary  American 
town.  The  result  will  be  accurate  enough  for  our  pres 
ent  purposes.  A  Boston  bricklayer  who  got  $1.22  for  a 
ten-hour  day  in  1917  would  be  as  well  off  as  his  esteemed 
contemporary  in  Yokohama.  A  mill  hand  in  Lawrence 
or  Lowell  who  drew  fifty-seven  cents  a  day  for  an  eleven- 
hour  day  would  be  able  to  live  as  high  as  his  brother 
operator  in  Nagasaki. 

This  situation  is  further  made  clear  by  this  budget 
taken  from  the  ( '  Letters  from  a  Japanese  Patriot ' '  which 
appeared  in  the  issue  of  "Asia"  for  May,  1920: 


WAGES  AND  EXPLOITATION  87 

"For  illustration,  I  will  steal  the  family  notebook  of  a  school 
teacher  who  has  a  wife  and  two  children.  It  is  a  typical 
monthly  account  of  last  winter. 

Yen 

Salary 28.00 

Bonus    6.50 

Total    34.50 

Rice 20.70 

Vegetables,  fish,  etc 7.22 

Fuel     2.50 

Newspaper   90 

Club  fee 15 

Social  expenditure,  etc 1.50 

Expenses  for  children 1.00 

Total    .  33.97 


.53 

"This  man  lives  on  the  school  premises  and  pays  no  rent. 
He  has  about  53  sen  (26  cents)  left  over  every  month,  and  out 
of  these  odd  sen  he  has  to  buy  clothes  for  himself  and  his 
family,  and  to  set  by  something  for  emergencies. 

"Do  I  need  to  say  more  to  explain  to  you  why  discontent  is 
eating  into  the  lives  of  my  people?'7 

Let  the  New  York  City  school  teacher  who  thinks  she 
is  badly  underpaid  and  down-trodden  on  a  wage  of  from 
$1635  to  $2160  yearly  compare  herself  with  this  unfor 
tunate  man,  who  is  no  worse  off  than  the  141,000  teachers 
in  Japan  with  monthly  earnings  of  $17.25,  or  $207  a  year. 
What  would  she  say  and  do  if  she  had  to  spend  $14  out 
of  every  $17  she  received  for  food  alone  ? 


88  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN  t 

Professor  Takagi  of  Keio  University  attempted  an  in 
quiry  into  the  living  expenses  of  workpeople  and  petty 
salary  men  in  1917,  taking  as  the  basis  of  his  estimates 
these  figures  from  earlier  compilations:  food  5.226  yen, 
rent  4.472,  fuel  1.712,  clothing  2.090  and  so  on.  After 
making  due  allowances  for  the  rise  of  commodities,  his 
conclusions  are  that  the  living  expenses  are  37.46  yen  a 
month.  The  corresponding  figures  for  July,  1914,  are 
similarly  assumed  by  him  at  25  yen.  Now  in  Tokio  the 
rise  of  commodities  from  July,  1914,  to  December,  1916, 
is  estimated  by  the  Government  to  be  about  100  per  cent., 
but  during  that  interval  wages  in  Tokio  increased  only 
43  per  cent. 

The  result  of  all  this  in  the  last  twenty  years,  but  most 
conspicuously  since  the  World  War  began,  was  inevitable 
and  obvious.  Japanese  capitalists  and  manufacturers 
saw  in  this  cheap  labor  a  glittering  opportunity  to  un 
derbid  American  and  European  competitors  and  capture 
the  world's  trade.  This  they  proceeded  to  do  with  the 
same  enthusiasm  and  the  same  methods  which  the  British 
manufacturers  displayed  two  generations  ago,  and  the 
Germans  imitated  with  added  cunning  and  scientific 
technic  after  1880.  In  this  history  of  the  world  there 
has  never  been  a  shift  of  millions  of  men  and  money 
from  farm  to  factory  as  swift  or  as  vast  as  the  shift  in 
Japan  since  1900.  In  1896  there  were  only  434,852  fac 
tory  workers  of  all  kinds  in  the  country.  In  seven  years 
this  number  doubled.  To-day  there  are  more  than  a 
million  and  a  quarter. 

The  darker  devices  of  exploitation  which  not  so  very 
long  ago  prevailed  in  Germany  and  other  Western  in 
dustrial  states  are  being  reproduced  all  over  Japan.  A 


WAGES  AND  EXPLOITATION  89 

recent  study  by  Ken  Katayama,  in  the  January  issue  of 
1  'Asia/'  1920,  shows  that  two  hundred  thousand  girls 
are  drawn  every  year  from  farm  to  factory,  and  of  this 
horde  eighty  thousand  return  home  sick  and  shattered. 
Girls  are  enticed  from  the  country  and  kept  prisoners, 
ill  fed,  in  rough  dormitories,  very  much  as  poor  whites 
and  negroes  used  to  be  only  a  decade  ago  in  the  turpen 
tine  camps  of  our  South.  The  government  factories 
employ  girls  under  fourteen  years  of  age  in  many  cases, 
and  in  the  match  and  cotton  factories  mere  children  can 
be  found.  Most  of  them  work  fourteen  hours  a  day. 

All  of  this  closely  parallels  a  hundred  instances  well 
known  in  the  industrial  history  of  Germany,  such  as  the 
congestion,  underpay,  and  overwork  in  Treptow,  the 
great  manufacturing  suburb  of  Berlin. 

There  is  another  and  even  blacker  side  of  exploitation 
which  must  be  recorded  here.  It  is  the  exploitation  not 
of  the  worker,  but  of  the  ultimate,  consumer.  Japanese 
industrialists  to-day  are  at  the  same  moral  level  that  the 
British  manufacturers  occupied  half  a  century  ago. 
Bent  solely  on  profits,  the  latter  gave  no  heed,  to  the  in 
jury  the  sale  of  their  rum  and  firearms  worked  on  for 
eign  peoples.  They  used  to  send  a  shipload  of  rum  and 
guns  with  every  box  of  Bibles,  and  used  a  British  gun 
boat  to  compel  the  natives  to  swallow  both  the  theology 
and  the  liquor.  So  now  with  the  Japanese  manufactur 
ers  of  morphia  and  opium.  These  men  are  mercilessly 
exploiting  the  Chinese,  and  in  their  vicious  trade  they 
are  being  aided  by  the  Japanese  Government. 

This  has  been  thoroughly  investigated  and  exposed  by 
a  number  of  authorities.  Their  findings  have  been  re 
ported  in  detail  through  official  channels.  We  give  you 


90  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

herewith  a  news  summary  of  the  matter  that  was  pub 
lished  by  the  "North  China  Daily  News."  The  picture 
is  as  horrible  as  it  is  true : 

"Morphia  can  no  longer  be  purchased  in  Europe.  The  seat 
of  the  industry  has  been  transferred  to  Japan  and  morphia  is 
now  purchased  by  the  Japanese  themselves.  Literally  tens  of 
millions  of  yen  are  transferred  annually  from  China  to  Japan 
for  the  payment  of  Japanese  morphia. 

"The  chief  agency  in  the  distribution  of  morphia  in  China  is 
the  Japanese  post-office.  Morphia  is  imported  by  parcels  post. 
No  inspection  of  parcels  in  the  Japanese  post-offices  in  China 
is  permitted  to  the  Chinese  Customs  Service.  The  service  is 
only  allowed  to  know  what  the  alleged  contents  are,  as  stated 
in  the  Japanese  invoices.  Yet  morphia  enters  China  by  this 
channel  by  the  ton.  A  conservative  estimate  would  place  the 
amount  imported  by  the  Japanese  into  China  in  the  course  of 
a  year  as  high  as  eighteen  tons,  and  there  is  evidence  that  the 
amount  is  steadily  increasing. 

"In  South  China  morphia  is  sold  by  Chinese  peddlers,  each 
of  whom  carries  a  passport  certifying  that  he  is  a  native  of 
Formosa  and  therefore  entitled  to  Japanese  protection.  Jap 
anese  drug  stores  throughout  China  carry  large  stocks  of 
morphia.  Japanese  medicine  vendors  look  to  morphia  for  their 
largest  profits.  Wherever  Japanese  are  predominant,  there  the 
trade  nourishes.  Through  Tairen,  morphia  circulates  through 
out  Manchuria  and  the  provinces  adjoining;  through  Tsingtao 
morphia  is  distributed  over  Shantung  province,  Anhui  and 
Kiangsu;  while  from  Formosa  morphia  is  carried  with  opium 
and  other  contraband  by  motor-driven  fishing  boats  to  some 
point  on  the  mainland,  from  which  it  is  distributed  throughout 
the  province  of  Fukien  and  the  north  of  Kuangtung.  Every 
where  it  is  sold  by  Japanese  under  extraterritorial  protection. 

"While  the  morphia  trade  is  large  there  is  every  reason  to 
believe  that  the  opium  traffic,  upon  which  the  Japanese  are 


WAGES  AND  EXPLOITATION  91 

embarking  with  enthusiasm,  is  likely  to  prove  even  more 
lucrative.  In  the  Calcutta  opium  sales,  Japan  has  become  one 
of  the  considerable  purchasers  of  Indian  opium.  She  pur 
chases  for  Formosa  where  the  opium  trade  shows  a  steady 
growth,  and  where  opium  is  required  for  the  manufacture  of 
morphia.  Sold  by  the  government  of  India,  this  opium  is  ex 
ported  under  permits  applied  for  by  the  Japanese  Government, 
is  shipped  to  Kobe,  and  from  Kobe  is  trans-shipped  to 
Tsingtao.  Large  profits  are  being  made  in  this  trade,  in 
which  are  interested  some  of  the  leading  firms  of  Japan. 

"It  must  be  emphasized  that  this  opium  is  not  imported  into 
Japan.  It  is  trans-shipped  in  Kobe  Harbor,  from  which  point, 
assisted  by  the  Japanese  controlled  railway  to  Tsinanfu,  it  is 
smuggled  through  Shantung  into  Shanghai  and  the  Yangtze 
Valley.  This  opium  is  sold  in  Shanghai  at  $500  a  ball,  forty 
balls  to  the  chest,  a  total  valuation  of  about  $20,000  a  chest. 
China's  failure  to  sell  for  medical  purposes  her  opium  at 
$27,000  a  chest,  the  price  asked  by  the  opium  ring,  is  thus  ex 
plained.  The  price  is  undercut  by  the  Japanese.  There  is 
reason  to  believe  that  between  January  1  and  September  30, 
1918,  not  less  than  2000  chests  of  opium  purchased  in  India, 
were  imported  into  Tsingtao  through  Kobe. 

"Upon  this  amount  the  Japanese  authorities  levy  a  tax,  which 
does  not  appear  in  the  estimates,  equivalent  to  Tls.  4,000  a 
chest,  a  total  for  the  2,000  chests  at  the  present  rate  of  ex 
change  of  $10,000,000.  The  acquisition  of  the  immense  profit 
from  a  contraband  traffic  would  explain  the  origin  of  those 
immense  sums  now  being  lavished  upon  the  development  of 
Tsingtao  and  the  establishment  there  of  Japanese  commercial 
supremacy. 

"It  may  be  asked  how  it  is  possible  that  at  Tairen,  where  the 
morphia  traffic  is  greatest,  and  at  Tshintao,  which  is  the  chief 
center  of  the  Japanese  opium  trade,  the  importation  of  this 
contraband  continues  without  the  knowledge  of  the  Chinese 
Maritime  Customs.  At  both  Dalny  and  Tsingtao,  their  of- 


92  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

fices  are  wholly  under  the  control  of  the  Japanese  and  wholly 
manned  by  them.  Japanese  military  domination  would  forbid 
in  both  ports  any  interference  in  a  traffic  which  the  Japanese 
authorities  were  interested  in,  either  officially  or  unofficially. 
In  Dalny  the  highest  civic  dignity  has  been  conferred  upon 
the  chief  dealer  in  morphia  and  opium." 

Before  leaving  this  subject,  it  may  be  well  to  remove 
a  misapprehension  as  to  the  nature  of  Japan 's  industrial 
and  commercial  expansion.  Statements  have  frequently 
been  made  that  lead  the  reader  to  believe  that  all  of 
Japan's  economic  expansion  is  part  of  a  single  well  or 
dered  plan  to  engulf  China  and  perhaps  Siberia.  Such 
a  notion  attributes  a  degree  of  intelligence  and  coopera 
tion  most  flattering  to  the  Japanese  but  happily  impos 
sible.  The  plain  truth  is  that  there  are  hundreds  of 
Japanese  manufacturers  and  business  men  who  can  find 
work  for  the  nation 's  millions  of  workers  only  by  selling 
goods  abroad  or  else  by  developing  industries  abroad 
which  cater  to  the  basic  needs  of  Japan.  The  energy  of 
these  people,  employers  and  laborers  alike,  is  precisely 
like  any  physical  force  in  Nature.  It  tends  to  follow 
the  line  of  least  resistance.  It  presses  against  this  obsta 
cle  and  that,  now  driving  to  the  right  and  now  to  the 
left ;  and  wherever  things  give  way  to  it,  it  moves  on. 

Some  Japanese  have  lately  been  buying  large  tracts 
of  plantation  land  in  Ecuador.  Others  have  been  for 
nearly  ten  years  in  southern  Brazil,  where  a  large  Japa 
nese  colony  seems  to  have  met  with  considerable  success 
and  some  failures  in  rice  growing.  Others  have  gone  to 
the  Philippines,  notably  around  the  Gulf  of  Davao,  the 
richest  region  in  Mindanao,  and  are  reported  to  be  trans 
forming  the  country.  And  now  we  find  a  new  and  re- 


WAGES  AND  EXPLOITATION  93 

markable  expansion  in  the  most  densely  populated 
regions  of  Asia,  the  Dutch  East  Indies. 

The  "Dutch  East  Indian  Archipelago,"  a  commercial 
journal  in  Java,  reports  the  infiltration  of  Japanese  capi 
tal  there.  A  Japanese  company  that  is  in  the  market  to 
buy  three  large  estates  in  Central  Java  is  also  negotiat 
ing  for  the  purchase  of  the  Ngupit  and  Ketendan  estates, 
and  a  site  has  been  selected  at  Klaten  for  a  new  Japanese 
sugar  factory.  The  Sumber  Lawang  estate  of  1500 
bouws  (a  bouw  equals  1.7537  acres)  on  the  railway  line 
between  Surakarta  and  Samarang,  has  passed  into  Japa 
nese  hands  for  a  consideration  of  Fl.  600,000,  after 
changing  hands  in  1918  for  Fl.  70,000,  while  the  Ga- 
daren  sugar  estate  has  been  bought  for  Fl.  1,900,000. 

The  ''Economic  Review,"  of  London,  states  that  these 
constant  purchases  are  said  to  be  causing  some  uneasiness 
in  the  Dutch  East  Indies,  and  people  are  beginning  to 
clamor  for  preventive  measures.  "  While  the  Govern 
ment  is  in  a  position  to  refuse  new  concessions  to  Japa 
nese  applicants  it  has  no  power  to  prevent  their  buying 
up  existing  estates,  even  though  obviously  purchased  for 
other  than  commercial  reasons,  as  is  manifestly  the  case 
when  the  estate  is  worthless  and  incapable  of  being  made 
productive.  The  one  infallible  way  of  keeping  Japanese 
capital  out  is  to  secure  a  larger  investment  of  European 
and  American  capital,  and  unless  Western  capital  shows 
more  enterprise  it  must  be  prepared  to  find  its  Japanese 
rival  gradually  occupying  every  corner  in  the  East." 

The  eighth  likeness  between  Japan  and  the  pre-war 
Germany  grew  directly  out  of  the  whole  abnormal  indus 
trial  expansion  in  overpopulated  districts.  It  is  the  sud- 


94  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

den  rise  of  discontented  workers  against  such  exploita 
tion,  the  consequent  formation  of  labor-unions  and  a 
labor  party,  and  the  battle  for  reforms  which  directly  or 
indirectly  menace  the  feudalistic  political  order,  and 
move  toward  a  national  crisis  in  the  shaping  of  which  the 
ruling  classes,  by  virtue  of  their  having  absolute  control 
of  army,  navy,  railways,  and  newspapers,  do  pretty  much 
as  they  please  at  first. 

The  twenty  years  preceding  the  World  War  developed 
this  whole  movement  within  Germany.  The  labor-un 
ions  waxed  fat  and  strong  on  the  grievances  of  the  work 
ers.  As  they  organized  with  ever  mounting  skill,  they 
undertook  the  education  of  their  numbers  in  economics 
and  politics  and  thereby  accelerated  the  growth  of  the 
Socialist  party.  The  Junkers  and  their  adherent  in 
dustrialists  fought  stubbornly  to  retain  complete  mastery 
of  the  political  situation.  They  managed  to  do  this  at 
first  by  a  great  variety  of  devices,  each  of  which  was 
broken  down  one  by  one  by  the  doughty  workers.  In 
desperation  the  feudalists  took  final  refuge  in  their  sys 
tem  of  "  rotten  boroughs."  Thanks  to  their  control  of 
the  Prussian  legislature,  they  had  been  able  to  win  elec 
tion  after  election  with  a  minority  vote.  This  they  ac 
complished  by  so  shaping  the  election  districts  in  the  in 
dustrial  cities  where  the  forces  of  labor  and  Socialism 
were  strong  that  a  few  wealthy  voters  outballoted  thou 
sands  of  the  common  people.  Thus  in  Berlin  before  the 
war  the  fashionable  residence  district  adjoining  the 
Tiergarten,  Berlin's  chief  park,  chose  one  member  of  the 
Reichstag,  while  the  most  densely  populated  part  of 
Treptow,  the  industrial  suburb,  did  the  same.  In  the 


WAGES  AND  EXPLOITATION  95 

former  district  a  scant  hundred  ballots  were  cast,  while 
the  Treptow  district  cast  many  thousand. 

The  effect  of  such  corrupt  tactics  was  inevitable,  even 
in  the  face  of  immense  and  shrewd  resistance  from  the 
reactionaries.  By  1910  the  Socialist  vote  had  grown  to 
the  point  where  it  was  clear  that  even  under  the  1 1  rotten 
borough''  system  it  would  soon  be  voting  the  feudal  lords 
and  their  hangers-on  out  of  existence.  Some  observers, 
optimistically  inclined,  were  tempted  to  infer  from  this 
that  the  war  peril  that  had  hung  over  Europe  ever  since 
1870  was  passed.  It  looked  to  them  as  if  a  Socialist  ma 
jority,  which  was  opposed  to  militarism  and  to  war, 
would  certainly  block  every  move  of  the  war  party 
thenceforth.  Other  observers,  though,  who  understood 
the  psychology  of  the  ruling  classes  and  the  overwhelm 
ing  power  of  centralized  authority  and  propaganda,  sus 
pected  that  the  kaiser  would,  if  it  came  to  preserving  his 
holy  authority  and  the  dynasty,  follow  that  course  known 
of  old  to  sovereigns  and  their  advisers,  the  course  laid 
down  by  Machiavelli,  "When  trouble  threatens  at  home, 
start  a  foreign  war."  We  shall  probably  never  know 
how  large  a  part  this  maxim  played  in  bringing  the 
cataclysm  of  August,  1914,  but  it  was  certainly  an  active 
factor. 

So  to-day  in  Japan.  To  be  sure,  the  medieval  forces 
are  still  in  complete  control  of  the  political  situation. 
To  'believe  in  Socialism  is  illegal,,  and  to  exploit  the  doc 
trine  through  press  or  party  meets  with  the  reward  of 
hanging.  Only  ten  years  ago  Kotoke,  his  wife,  and  ten 
other  followers  of  Kropotkin's  teachings  were  hanged, 
and  since  that  event  nobody  has  seen  fit  to  launch  a  So- 


96  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

cialist  party  or  anything  faintly  resembling  one  in  Japan. 
None  the  less  the  pressure  from  the  working  classes,  as 
well  as  from  the  educated  classes  outside  of  the  bureau 
cracy,  has  steadily  increased.  The  demand  for  party 
government  has  become  more  and  more  insistent.  It 
forced  the  resignation  of  Terauchi  and  his  cabinet  in 
the  summer  of  1918,  and  then  for  the  first  time  in  the 
history  of  the  empire  a  commoner  headed  the  cabinet. 
After  the  medieval  fashion,  this  able  man,  Mr.  Hara, 
was  promptly  raised  to  the  peerage;  but  not  even  the 
title  of  viscount  prevented  him  from  greatly  extending 
the  freedom  of  the  press  and  public  speech.  Nor  did  it 
check  him  in  his  plan  to  broaden  the  electorate,  which 
he  did  in  1919.  To-day  any  Japanese  man  who  pays  a 
direct  tax  of  $1.50  or  more  per  year  can  qualify  as  a 
voter.  By  this  act  the  number  of  voters  has  been  in 
creased  greatly,  and  many  foreign  observers  have  hailed 
the  Hara  suffrage  reform  as  conclusive  evidence  that 
democracy  is  sweeping  Japan. 

Here,  unhappily,  we  come  upon  another  of  those  easy 
illusions  created  of  American  ignorance  of  far-away 
affairs.  The  tendency  among  us  is  to  think  of  the  situa 
tion  in  terms  of  our  own  life  and  land;  and  thinking 
thus,  we  see  at  once  that,  if  every  male  American  adult 
who  paid  $1.50  a  year  in  direct  taxes  were  allowed  to 
vote,  almost  everybody  except  the  inmates  of  poorhouses 
and  asylums  would  have  the  franchise.  The  poor  white 
of  the  back  mountains  who  pays  a  tax  on  his  yellow  dog 
would  be  admitted  to  the  precious  circle  of  voters.  From 
which  we  infer  that  to-day  most  Japanese,  or  at  any  rate 
a  very  large  number  of  them,  are  now  enfranchised. 

This  is  incorrect.     Millions  of  Japanese  earn  less  than 


WAGES  AND  EXPLOITATION  97 

$30  a  month,  and  millions  of  farm  workers,  most  of  whom 
are  tenants,  possess  no  property  save  the  clothes  on  their 
backs  and  a  few  primitive  farm  tools.  The  consequence 
is  that,  prior  to  the  Hara  reform  about  25  Japanese  out 
of  every  1,000  had  the  suffrage,  while  to-day,  thanks  to 
this  "democratic"  advance,  about  60  out  of  1,000  enjoy 
the  privilege. 

Nominally,  even  this  low  percentage  makes  a  fairly 
good  showing.  It  means  that  more  than  3,000,000  men 
are  privileged  to  vote.  But  in  reality  the  bulk  of  this 
number  is  almost  as  negligible  at  the  polls  as  our  own 
Southern  negroes  are,  and  for  similar  reasons.  They 
remain,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out,  under  the  ancient 
and  strict  supervision  of  the  go-no,  or  village  superin 
tendent,  very  much  as  the  negroes  are  held  in  control  by 
the  small  white  rulers  of  the  average  Southern  town.  In 
brief,  Japan  now  stands  at  the  stage  of  political  develop 
ment  which  Germany  occupied  about  twenty-five  yearns 
ago.  The  dissatisfaction  of  the  masses  has  forced  the 
hand  of  the  rulers  to  the  extent  of  wringing  from  them  a 
qualified  suffrage.  But  the  substance  of  power  still  re 
mains  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  old  leaders  of  the 
feudal  clans,  the  Genro,  and  their  coterie  of  manufac 
turers  and  financiers,  with  whom  are  allied  the  mili 
tarists. 

They  exhibited  their  fear  and  hatred  of  democracy 
afresh  on  February  28,  1920,  when  the  mikado  dissolved 
the  Diet  because  of  the  bitter  disagreement  between  the 
Government  and  the  party  leaders  over  the  issue  of  ex 
tending  manhood  suffrage. 

Those  who  defended  the  Government  in  its  thwarting 
of  democratic  forces  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that,  in  view 


98  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

of  the  industrial  unrest  and  the  ticklish  foreign  affairs 
in  which  the  Government  was  embroiled,  a  larger  elec 
torate  would  imperil  the  nation's  policies.  All  of  which 
is  precisely  what  the  German  militarists  and  autocrats 
were  saying  between  1900  and  1914,  when  repeated  at 
tempts  were  made  to  broaden  the  German  franchise. 
And,  again  as  in  Germany,  this  contemptuous  attitude 
is  irritating  the  masses  more  and  more  and  provoking 
them  to  strikes  and  other  outbreaks. 

How  far  the  new  laboring  classes  of  the  cities  have 
gone  in  the  way  of  breaking  with  the  traditional  Jap 
anese  respect  for  authority  and  law  appears  in  the  rec 
ords  of  the  many  strikes  during  the  last  few  years.  The 
latest  Japan  Year  Book  reports  them  to  have  increased 
eightfold  from  1914  to  1918.  Increase  of  wages  has  been 
the  ruling  motive  in  these  agitations.  The  cases  aris 
ing  from  this  cause  have  increased  from  25  with  4,105 
men  involved  in  1914  to  340  with  59,197  participants  in 
1918,  and  the  total  in  five  years  since  the  outbreak  of  the 
War  show  778  cases  and  121,147  strikers.  It  is  typical 
of  the  Japanese  attitude  towards  one's  superiors  that 
very  little  complaint  has  been  made  about  the  manage 
ment,  and  no  demand  for  the  reduction  of  working  hours 
has  ever  been  recorded.  There  were  454  strikes  involv 
ing  84,120  men  that  were  settled  by  compromise.  In  198 
controversies  with  25,252  laborers,  the  latter  carried  their 
point. 

'  *  Millard  's  Keview ' '  recently  reports  that : 

"Although  contrary  to  law,  labor  is  going  into  unions,  and 
only  a  few  weeks  ago  seven  seamen's  unions  in  Japan  formed 
a  general  amalgamation,  with  membership  of  20,000.  The 
police  have  power  and  law  to  enable  them  to  break  up  any 


WAGES  AND  EXPLOITATION  99 

union,  but  they  are  not  bringing  it  to  bear  except  in  extreme 
cases.  Even  the  Imperial  government  sees  what  is  here;  it  is 
about  to  establish  a  Labor  Bureau  under  the  Ministry  of  Ag 
riculture  and  Industry.  A  law  that  will  legalize  unionism 
is  under  consideration.  It  would  permit  only  the  unioniza 
tion  of  the  employes  of  one  establishment — in  general  unions 
of  even  a  single  trade.  But  without  sanction  of  law,  unions 
are  growing  up  and  there  are  strikes.  Every  day  brings 
notices  of  some  labor  agitation.  In  an  iron  works  employing 
1200  men  there  was  a  'go  slow'  in  progress  late  in  December, 
this  being  one  way  of  showing  respect  for  the  letter  of  the 
law  and  at  the  same  time  getting  results." 

Though  the  Japanese  display  little  ill  feeling  toward 
their  employers,  they  axe  beginning  to  show  their  teeth 
to  the  officers  of  the  law.  At  the  Ashio  copper-mines,  in 
the  winter  of  1919,  more  than  seven  thousand  workers 
walked  out  and  became  so  violent  that,  for  the  first  time 
in  the  history  of  Japan,  the  local  police  called  out  the 
soldiery  to  help  suppress  disturbances.  At  the  Hidashi 
mines  other  strikers  tore  the  shoulder-straps  from  a  po 
liceman,  an  act  that  is,  for  Japan,  almost  as  startling  and 
significant  as  it  would  be  in  our  country,  let  us  say,  for 
Mr.  Gompers  to  slap  General  Pershing's  face  in  public. 
These  two  instances  are  not  at  all  unusual ;  they  may  be 
paralleled  all  over  Japan. 

All  these  labor  troubles  grow,  in  large  measure,  out  of 
the  country's  unsound  financial  methods.  It  must 
amaze  the  American  reader  to  learn  that  no  less  than  44 
per  cent,  of  the  total  income  of  the  Japanese  people  is 
taken  for  taxes.  This  means  much  more  than  it  would 
if  we  were  speaking  of  the  American  public,  for  the 
Japanese  live  ever  so  much  nearer  to  the  margin  of  bare 


100  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

subsistence  than  we  do.  Contrast  the  two  lowest  grades 
of  workers  who  are  important  by  reason  of  their  large 
numbers.  In  Japan  a  farm  hand  earns  $27  a  year,  with 
rice  and  sleeping  quarters,  or  between  $75  and  $100  a 
year  if  he  provides  for  himself.  In  the  United  States 
the  poorer  .farm  hands  earn  between  $600  and  $800  a 
year,  with  food  and  lodgings ;  or,  on  a  day 's  work  basis, 
from  $2  to  $3  a  day.  These  figures,  of  course,  are  greatly 
exceeded  by  those  workers  in  more  favored  districts, 
such  as  the  Great  Valley  of  California,  the  trucking  dis 
tricts  of  Maryland  and  Virginia,  and  so  on.  I  have  per 
sonally  met  many  farm  hands  during  the  past  years  who 
were  earning  $4  and  $5  a  day  during  the  planting  and 
harvesting  seasons. 

Observe,  now,  that  a  tax  of  44  per  cent.,  whether  col 
lected  directly  or  indirectly,  would  leave  the  Japanese 
farm  hand  with  the  magnificent  sum.  of  $15.12  at  the 
year's  end,  with  which  to  launch  upon  an  orgy  of  ex 
travagance  truly  Oriental.  The  same  burden,  imposed 
upon  our  own  horny-handed  man  with  the  hoe,  leaves 
him  with  at  least  $336,  and  possibly  $500,  or  more  for 
buying  clothes,  contemplating  the  movies,  and  issuing 
souvenir  postal  cards. 

This  comparison  must  not  be  taken  too  literally.  It 
must  be  qualified  by  a  number  of  technical  matters  too 
abstruse  to  mention  here.  The  distribution  of  the  tax 
burden,  for  instance,  is  by  no  means  even  over  all  classes 
of  population,  either  in  Japan  or  America ;  so  that  the  44 
per  cent,  average  cannot  be  strictly  applied  to  the  lower 
working  classes.  Still  the  main  feature  of  the  parallel 
is  essentially  accurate.  The  burden  of  indirect  taxation 
lies  crushingly  upon  the  common  people  of  Japan. 


CHAPTER  10 

RAW  MATERIALS,  RUSSIA,  AND  "A  PLACE  IN  THE 

SUN" 

rilHE  ninth  likeness  between  Japan  and  pre-war  Ger- 
A  many  is  the  lack  of  a  domestic  supply  of  those  raw 
materials  most  used  in  modern  manufacturing.  Here, 
though,  Japan  is  in  a  much  worse  plight  than  Germany 
ever  was.  Let  us  consider  only  the  three  most  import 
ant  items,  coal,  iron,  and  cotton.  Germany  possessed 
considerable  coal,  but  not  enough  to  sustain  her  expand 
ing  manufacturing  enterprises  far  into  the  future. 
Japan  has  to  import  virtually  every  ton  of  coal  her  fac 
tories  use.  Germany  had  rich  iron  deposits,  but  again 
not  in  sufficient  abundance  for  her  growing  world  trade. 
Japan  has  no  iron.  She  is  seeking  it  in  Korea  and  Man 
churia,  both  of  which  have  rich,  but  as  yet  slightly  de 
veloped,  deposits;  and  she  is  looking  toward  the  still 
richer  fields  in  northern  China.  As  for  cotton,  both 
countries  are  equally  destitute.  Long  before  the  war, 
German  manufacturers  looked  longingly  to  the  Near 
East  and  the  Mesopotamian  Valley;  if  that  could  only 
be  German  territory,  then  the  German  textile  industries 
might  soon  become  self-sufficient.  Japan  has  looked  to 
Korea  and  also  to  Formosa,  but  with  feeble  hope.  The 
Korean  climate  is  unfavorable  to  cotton,  and  Formosa 
can  grow  much  more  profitable  crops,  such  as  sugar,  to- 

101 


10?.;  :  :  ,  .    MUST  A\^  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

baeco,  and,  on  the  hills,  the  precious  camphor-tree. 
China,  on  the  other  hand,  entices  the  Japanese  cotton- 
grower  with  many  alluring  potentialities.  While  Chinese 
cotton  is  inferior  to  the  American  crop,  it  is  not  seriously 
so  for  the  bulk  of  the  Oriental  trade,  and  it  has  the  im 
mense  advantages  of  being  much  closer  to  Japanese  mills, 
hence  cheaper  and  more  speedily  delivered. 

In  petroleum,  wool,  timber,  copper,  zinc,  nickel,  and 
many  other  materials  of  the  utmost  importance  to  mod 
ern  industry  Japan  is  similarly  deficient.  And  each  such 
deficiency  figures  properly  in  the  framing  of  her  na 
tional  policy. 

The  tenth  likeness  between  Japan  and  pre-war  Ger 
many  is  an  outgrowth  of  the  fifth  likeness ;  namely,  both 
countries  lying  next  to  Russia  and  her  colossal  unde- 
veloped  resources,  and  also  of  the  nature  of  their  other 
neighbors.  Both  countries  adjoin,  in  short,  two  peculiar 
types  of  territory,  the  one  being  non-industrial  and  rich 
in  raw  materials,  and  the  other  being  of  a  low  industrial 
and  political  order  and  potentially  a  great  market  for 
manufactured  goods.  Thus  each  country  finds  in  its 
environment  beyond  its  political  borders  regions  which 
can  satisfy  its  three  most  urgent  needs,  the  need  of  raw 
materials  for  its  factories,  the  need  of  ready  markets 
for  the  products  of  those  factories,  and  the  need  of  un 
developed  lands  for  its  surplus  population. 

For  both  Germany  and  Japan,  Russia,  including  Si 
beria,  is  the  land  of  promise.  Russia  has  room  for  count 
less  millions  of  Germans.  She  has  room  for  countless 
millions  of  Japanese.  Russia  has  coal,  iron,  copper,  zinc, 
timber,  cotton,  wheat,  and  almost  everything  else  for 
German  mills  and  factories.  Russia  has  all  these  good 


"A  PLACE  IN  THE  SUN" 

things  for  Japanese  mills  and  factories.  South  of  Russia, 
on  Germany's  side  of  the  world,  lie  the  Balkans  and  the 
Near  East,  a  constellation  of  small,  backward  countries 
which  before  1814  were  thickly  populated  and  moderately 
prosperous  on  a  primitive  agrarian  level.  To  the  people 
of  these  lands  German  salesmen  could  and  did  go,  build 
ing  up  an  immense  trade  with  them  in  numberless  lines 
of  manufactured  goods  none  of  which  they  themselves 
produced.  At  the  same  time  German  manufacturers  be 
gan  opening  factories  and  buying  up  forests  and  mines 
and  railways  and  harbor  concessions,  all  with  the  view  of 
changing  the  regions  into  factory  towns  progressively. 
To-day  we  note  the  same  spectacle  south  of  Russia,  on 
Japan 's  side  of  the  world.  There  bulks  China,  vaster 
than  twenty  Balkans,  but  none  the  less  a  cluster  of  Bal 
kan  States  in  very  nature  and  waiting  for  just  such  ex 
ploitation  as  the  Balkans  were  enjoying  at  Germany's 
hands  down  to  Sarajevo.  Here  looms  the  greatest  of 
all  the  eternal  triangles  of  trade  —  the  triangle  of  raw 
material,  factory,  and  market.  Russia  the  raw  material, 
Japan  the  factory,  and  China  the  market!  And  to-day 
the  enterprising  young  business  men  of  Japan  are  thrust 
ing  down  into  China  with  their  wares,  while  the  strenu 
ous  young  pioneers  of  Japan  are  working  steadily  west 
ward  into  Siberia,  under  the  sure  protection  of  Japa 
nese  soldiers,  precisely  as  the  German  drummer  worked 
down  into  the  Balkans  and  Turkey,  while  his  lusty 
brother  off  the  sandy  Prussian  farm  was  heading  for  the 
black  lands  of  Russia  or  the  Siberian  steppes. 

The  eleventh  likeness  between  the  two  countries  ap 
pears  in  their  efforts  to  find  * '  a  place  in  the  sun ' '  and  in 
the  systematic  thwarting  of  these  efforts  by  the  great 


104  MUST  WJE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

military  and  naval  powers  of  Europe.  We  pass  no  judg 
ment  here  on  the  right  or  the  wrong  of  Germany 's  efforts 
to  establish  colonies  which  she  might  people  with  her  own 
blood.  Nor  do  we  condemn  or  praise  the  parallel  en 
deavor  of  Japan.  We  merely  report  the  plain  historical 
fact  of  the  attempt  and  the  blocking  of  it. 

As  has  often  been  said,  Germany  came  into  the 
"game  of  world  politics  too  late.  When  she  began  cast 
ing  about  for  colonies,  all  the  good  land  had  been  taken 
by  other  powers,  notably  the  British,  French,  Americans, 
and  Russians.  An  early  effort  to  turn  southern  Brazil 
into  a  German  colony  by  non-political  assimilation  came 
to  naught.  German  settlers  trickled  into  Russia  and  be 
came  an  important  element  in  many  towns,  but  they  built 
no  colonies.  All  that  the  empire  was  able  to  get  was  the 
all  but  worthless  Southwest  Africa,  where  the  Hereros 
cost  them  in  warfare  more  than  the  whole  territory  will 
ever  sell  for;  and  also  a  somewhat  better  tract  in  East 
Africa,  little  of  which  could  be  inhabited  by  white  men. 
As  for  the  small  Pacific  islands  the  kaiser  acquired,  they 
were  merely  strategic  possessions  at  best. 

Japan  has  fared  a  little  better,  but  not  enough  to 
mar  our  comparison.  In  1894  the  island  empire  went 
to  war  with  China  and  won  easily.  In  the  peace 
treaty  the  Japanese  claimed  an  indemnity  and  the  Liao- 
tung  peninsula  and  littoral,  among  other  things. 
Whether  this  was  just  or  unjust  is  not  here  under  dis 
cussion;  we  are  concerned  only  to  relate  the  historical 
fact  again.  Russia,  France,  and  Germany  protested 
vehemently,  called  these  terms  "yellow  imperialism," 
and  succeeded  in  forcing  Japan  to  renounce  them.  A 
little  while  after,  Russia  took  Liaotung,  saying  nothing 


"A  PLACE  IN  THE  SUN"  105 

about  " imperialism"  as  she  did  so.  Across  the  water, 
in  Shantung,  Germany  shortly  seized  Kiaochiao.  And 
France  was  soon  negotiating  with  China  for  exclusive 
privileges  in  her  southern  provinces,  which  she  got. 
Most  historians  incline  to  the  belief  that  it  was  these 
hypocritical  deeds  which  forced  Japan  to  meet  force 
with  force  in  world  politics  and  become  a  mighty  mili 
tary  power.  Be  this  as  it  may,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
whatever  that  Europe's  dishonest  intrusion  upon  that 
treaty  hastened  Japan's  resolve  to  make  herself  mistress 
of  her  quarter  of  the  earth,  which  meant  first  of  all  an 
nexing  Korea.  This  was  accomplished,  to  all  practical 
ends,  though  not  technically,  in  1900,  and  became  com 
plete  and  open  at  the  close  of  the  Russo-Japanese  War, 
though  it  was  not  until  1910  that  the  Emperor  of  Korea 
formally  recognized  Japanese  sovereignty. 

Korea,  technically,  is  the  equivalent  of  a  fine  large 
colony  that  Germany  might  have  envied.  But,  as  a  mat 
ter  of  fact,  it  has  not  turned  out  as  well  as  Japan  had 
hoped  for.  After  ten  years  of  complete  domination  fol 
lowing  a  decade  of  partial  control,  Japan  has  managed  to 
draw  to  the  peninsula  only  three  hundred  thousand  of 
her  subjects.  This  is  less  than  two  per  cent,  of  the  popu 
lation  of  Korea  to-day.  Despite  heavy  subsidies  from  the 
Government,  the  Japanese  have  not  taken  up  farms 
there.  Those  who  have  gone  stick  to  the  towns,  in  pro 
found  and  well  grounded  fear  of  the  Koreans,  who  to 
this  day  have  as  much  love  for  the  Japanese  as  the  Pole* 
have  for  the  Russians.  So  we  can  reckon  Korea  as  a 
colony  only  in  a  very  limited  way. 

The  recent  encroachments  of  Japan  upon  China  do 
not  have  for  their  purpose  colonization.  Shantung  is 


1Q6  MUST.  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

now  the  most  densely  populated  region  in  the  world,  and 
no  place,  for  a  Japanese  to  go  except  to  sell  goods,  or  be 
a  clerk  in  the  post-offices  that  Japan  has  thoughtfully  set 
up  there.  As  for  the  moves  in  Siberia,  they  are  plainly 
being  made1  with  the  ulterior  motive  of  acquiring  some  of 
that  stupendous  area  for  the  human  overflow.  At  the 
date  of  this  writing  the  events  there,  as  well  as  the  at 
titudes  of  European  powers -and  the  United  States,  are 
so  camouflaged  by  many  propagandists  and  so  frag 
mentary  that  it  is  best  not  to  pass  judgment  upon  them 
here. 

The  twelfth  likeness  is  the  equal  determination  of 
Germany  in  pre-war  days  and  of  Japan  to-day  to  retain 
the  allegiance  of  and  political  control  over  men  and 
women  of  their  races  who  have  gone  into  foreign  lands 
,to  live. 

In  fairness  it  must  be  said  that  this  attitude  is  not 
peculiar  to  these  two  countries.  It  is  the  general  tend 
ency  throughout  the  world.  Americans  are  especially 
liable  to  misunderstand  it  because  our  laws  of  citizenship 
run  contrary  to  those  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  We  have 
a  point  of  view  on  the  whole  matter  of  allegiance  that  can 
easily  mislead  us  in  judging  the  acts  of  other  nations. 
For  this  reason  the  careful  reader  must  survey  the  laws 
of  citizenship  and  naturalization  which  Mr.  E.  T.  Wil 
liams  has  comprehensively  summarized  and  interpreted 
in  a  later  chapter.  At  this  stage  of  our  discussion,  it 
will  suffice  to  show  how  Japan  always  has  and  still  does 
strive  to  hold  to  her  flag  and  her  culture  every  native 
and  every  child  of  a  native  who  has  gone  beyond  the 
boundaries  of  empire.  You  will  see  at  once  the  com- 


"A  PLACE  IN  THE  SUN"  107 

plete  parallel  to  Germany's  practice,  which  the  World 
War  brought  to  light  in  our  own  land. 

The  Civil  Code  of  Japan,  Vol.  3,  article  66,  states, 
"A  child  is  a  Japanese  if  his  or  her  father  is  a  Japanese 
at  the  time  of  his  or  her  birth. "  Thus  every  boy  and 
girl  born  in  a  Japanese  workman's  family  in  Hawaii  or 
California  is  a  Japanese  citizen.  And  the  boy  is  legally 
bound  to  render  military  service  in  the  mikado's  army 
between  his  seventeenth  and  fortieth  years.  There  is 
only  one  way  in  which  he  can  avoid  this  duty  and  that  is 
to  renounce  formally  his  allegiance  to  Japan  in  a  regular 
form  provided  by  the  Japanese  Government,  and  then 
wait  until  the  Japanese  Government  formally  accepts 
this  renunciation. 

Here  is  a  remarkable  state  of  affairs.  Elsewhere  it  is 
generally  held  that  a  man  may  simply,  by  his  own  act, 
give  up  allegiance  to  his  native  land;  his  own  declara 
tion  is  enough.  But  Japan  is  a  jealous  god.  If  she 
chooses  to  accept  his  expatriation,  she  releases  him.  But 
if  she  chooses  not  to,  he  remains  a  Japanese  citizen  all 
his  life,  regardless  of  his  own  wishes.  Nor  is  this  all. 
According  to  Mr.  Charles  E.  Martin,  of  the  University 
of  California,  who  has  made  a  special  investigation  of 
this  matter : 

"If  before  the  age  of  17,  a  Japanese  has  not  expatriated  him 
self  ...  the  act  cannot  be  effected  until  he  has  satisfied  the 
military  requirements.  .  .  .  Should  a  Japanese  (in  America) 
return  to  Japan,  he  would  be  held  for  military  duty  and  his 
American  citizenship  (if  he  enjoyed  such)  would  not  be  rec 
ognized.  .  .  . 

"Should  an  expatriated  Japanese  return  to  Japan  and  estab- 


108  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

lish  his  residence  there,  repatriation  would  follow.  Under  the 
Japanese  law,  a  residence  of  one  day  is  sufficient  to  effect  one's 
repatriation." 

Do  you  see  what  this  means  as  to  the  status  of  the 
descendants  of  Japanese  born  in  the  United  States  ?  Our 
laws  treat  all  children  born  in  our  land  as  citizens.  Thus 
we  have  in  Hawaii  and  California  to-day  thousands  of 
boys  and  girls  born  of  Japanese  parents  possessing  all 
the  rights  and  privileges  of  Americans.  These  children 
will  not  go  to  Japan  in  any  numbers.  They  will  remain 
here,  grow  up  with  the  country,  marry,  have  children  of 
their  own,  and  permanently  establish  their  line  here. 
If,  however,  their  fathers  did  not  render  military  service 
to  Japan,  or  if,  having  rendered  it,  they  applied  for 
expatriation  in  vain,  then  all  these  boys  and  girls  born 
in  our  land  must  remain  Japanese  citizens,  subject  to 
military  service  under  the  mikado;  and  all  their  children 
and  their  children's  children,  and  thus  to  the  end  of  time. 
You  might  say,  of  course,  that  all  this  is  a  mere  legal 
technicality  which  in  practice  could  not  amount  to  much. 
The  children  of  Japanese  in  California  will  grow  up  in 
an  American  environment  and  absorb  our  ideals  and  cus 
toms  as  swiftly  as  any  Italian  or  Russian  Jewish  young 
sters  do;  so,  if  ever  it  once  came  to  a  pinch,  we  should 
find  them  as  loyal  as  any  son  of  the  American  Revolu 
tion.  It  would  be  well  if  this  might  happen.  But  the 
Japanese  Government  sees  to  it  that  it  does  not.  It  goes 
much  further  even  than  the  kaiser's  crew  did  in  main 
taining  contact  with  its  exiled  sons  and  in  fanning  the 
flame  of  culture  and  loyalty  in  their  breasts, 
f  Just  as  Germany  did,  Ja^an  helps  finance  private 
schools  in  Hawaii  and  California  where  the  Japanese 


"A  PLACE  IN  THE  SUN"  109 

language  and  culture  are  taught  to  the  American-born 
children  of  Nippon.  And  she  exceeds  Germany  in  that 
she  requires  all  Japanese  to  join  and  pay  dues  to  a 
native  society,  under  the  surveillance  of  Japanese  con 
suls,  in  every  community  where  one  hundred  or  more  of 
their  countrymen  live.  Through  these  organizations  the 
closest  check  is  kept  upon  every  man,  and  incidentally 
a  stream  of  information  is  drawn  touching  affairs  in  the 
United  States.  Officials  of  the  Japanese  Government 
have  frequently  made  strenuous  denial  of  this  fact  when 
it  has  been  asserted  in  California  newspapers;  but  there 
are  many  indisputable  evidences,  the  best  of  which  come  \ 
from  those  Japanese  who  resent  such  surveillance.  Sev 
eral  gentlemen  whom  I  have  consulted  have  interviewed 
such  Japanese  and  have  seen  documentary  proofs  of  it, 
and  a  recent  case  in  the  San  Francisco  police  court  re 
vealed  it.  B.  H.  Yamagata,  editor  of  a  Japanese  maga 
zine  in  that  city,  there  brought  complaint  against  S. 
Malsuruma  and  M.  Koike  for  having  assaulted  him  in 
his  home  and  threatened  his  life.  Yamagata  is  also  an 
officer  in  the  Japanese  Association  of  San  Francisco,  but 
apparently  not  friendly  to  the  Japanese  Government,  for 
he  recently  attacked  the  Japanese  consul-general,  T.  Ota, 
in  his  magazine  and  declared  that  "  we  Japanese  in  this 
city  do  not  propose  to  be  ordered  around  by  the  rule  of 
Tokio.  We  believe  that  the  methods  of  the  Consul  Gen 
eral  are  creating  ill  feeling  in  this  country  against  the 
Japanese."  Because  of  his  opposition  to  surveillance, 
complainant  alleged  that  he  had  been  attacked  and 
threatened. 

This    out-Prussias    Prussia.     Germany,    as    we    now 
know,  did  much  in  the  way  of  assisting  in  the  organiza- 


110  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tion  of  clubs  and  societies  and  newspapers;  but  never, 
even  in  her  boldest  moment,  did  she  hope  to  compel 
every  German-born  man  in  our  land  to  join  an  organiza 
tion,  support  it  with  dues,  and  render  himself  continu 
ously  liable  to  cross-examination  and  inspection  by  a 
German  official. 


CHAPTER  11 
CLASS  ETHICS  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC  BUREAUCRACY 

THE  thirteenth  likeness  has  apparently  been  noticed 
by  nobody  thus  far,  and  yet  it  is  clear  and  unques 
tionably  significant.  In  both  Germany  and  Japan,  down 
to  their  outburst  of  industrialism  a  few  decades  ago,  there 
existed  a  century-old  cultural  system  in  which,  true  to  the 
philosophy  of  Plato,  though  not  consciously  following 
him,  scholars  and  rulers  were  held  in  highest  esteem  and  \ 
counted  as  the  upper  castes,  while  traders  and  shopkeep-  1  3 
ers  were  looked  down  upon  and  relegated  to  the  lowest  , 
castes.  In  both  Germany  and  Japan,  under  that  older 
culture,  it  was  thoroughly  believed  that  the  man  who 
loved  truth  and  sought,  by  teaching  or  by  service  in  the 
state,  to  guide  others  in  morality  and  political  affairs 
was  of  a  much  higher  type  than  the  man  who  peddled 
fish  or  manufactured  suspenders,  even  though  the  fish 
was  fresh  and  the  suspenders  thoroughly  suspensory.  It 
was  believed  wise  to  rate  people  according  to  their  in 
telligence  and  their  ethics  rather  than  according  to  the 
skill  they  displayed  in  making  money. 

Waive  here  the  question  as  to  whether  that  concep 
tion  of  human  worth  is  higher  or  lower  than  the  economic 
conception  of  values  which  has  been  worked  out  chiefly 
by  the  Jews  and  the  Anglo-Saxons.  Waive  also  the  fur 
ther  and  still  more  difficult  question  as  to  whether  the 

ill 


112  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

German  and  Japanese  grading  of  virtues  was  not  inti 
mately  bound  up  with  the  state  religions,  or  possibly 
with  religiosity  in  general,  which  has  become  all  but 
extinct  in  both  Europe  and  America.  Look  only  to  the 
I  inevitable  effect  such  a  view  produces  upon  the  per 
sonnel  and  the  practices  of  the  commercial  classes. 

In  the  foreign  trade  field  to-day  we  find  the  same  wide 
spread  dishonesty  among  Japanese  that  was  notorious 
twenty-five  years  ago  among  the  Germans.  The  Japa 
nese  have  shown  little  respect  for  patent  rights  and  still 
less  for  the  fulfilment  of  contracts  and  the  maintenance 
of  trade  standards,  even  as  the  Germans  did  when  first 
they  entered  upon  modern  industrialism  and  world  trade. 

Such  a  sweeping  indictment  deserves  a  whole  book  of 
detail,  which  unfortunately  cannot  be  written  here  and 
now.  The  charge  amazes  those  Americans  who  have  met 
and  come  to  like  Japanese  students,  scholars,  and  other 
upper-class  types.  You  will  hear  such  Americans  say 
that  the  Japanese  are  the  most  honorable  people  in  all 
the  world.  What  they  do  not  understand  is  that  moral 
practices  are  never  and  nowhere  a  matter  of  a  race  or  of 
a  nation,  but  always  of  social  or  economic  classes;  and 
even  within  such  classes  they  vary  widely  according  to 
age,  education,  and  personal  rank.  To  talk  of  the  morals 
of  Japan  is  to  talk  unadulterated  nonsense;  one  might 
as  well  talk  of  the  morals  of  mankind.  There  simply 
is  n  't  any  such  thing.  There  is,  however,  a  set  of  cus 
toms  followed  more  or  less  generally  by  the  ordinary 
Japanese  business  man  and  manufacturer,  and  it  is  of 
this  we  here  speak.  And  hundreds  of  highly  competent 
observers,  British,  American,  and  German,  have  testified 
as  to  the  nature  of  such  customs. 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  BUREAUCRACY          118 

It  is,  for  instance,  a  well-known  fact  that  for  years 
the  Japanese  strained  every  nerve  to  steal  the  patents  of 
many  of  the  most  successful  American  inventions. 
Twenty  years  ago  the  present  writer  was  the  unwitting 
aid  to  three  enterprising  Japanese  gentlemen  in  ex 
plaining  a  printing  machine  and  its  processes,  which 
these  gentlemen  managed  within  a  few  years  to  imitate 
passably.  Even  earlier  than  that,  one  of  our  leading 
sewing-machine  manufacturers  found  himself  obliged  to 
ship  all  his  products  destined  for  Japan  with  one  vital 
part  missing  in  the  main  consignment.  His  reason  for 
this  was  that  he  had  found  the  Japanese  were  carrying 
off  his  machines  to  Tokio  and  trying  to  duplicate  them  in 
the  hope  of  stealing  his  patent  and  his  trade.  Needless 
to  say,  their  duplicates  did  not  work,  much  to  their  be 
wilderment.  It  is  still  a  common  practice  for  the  Japa 
nese  customs  officials  to  open  a  consignment,  remove  a 
sample  therefrom,  and  send  the  latter  to  Tokio  for  ''in 
spection  and  appraisal."  To  all  of  this  the  shipper  can 
not  well  object,  for  the  law  so  provides.  But  when  he 
has  waited  a  week  or  two  for  the  sample  to  be  returned 
and  sees  his  chances  of  prompt  delivery  to  his  buyer  go 
glimmering,  and  he  tells  the  custom  officials  that  they  can 
keep  the  sample  if  they  like  and  charge  him  whatever 
they  see  fit,  so  long  as  he  gets  his  goods  moving,  he  is 
told  gravely  that  the  "Japanese  Government  holds  itself 
in  honor  bound  to  forward  imported  goods  intact  pre 
cisely  in  the  condition  in  which  it  has  received  them." 
This  sounds  very  noble,  but  what  it  means  in  reality  is 
that  the  shipment  is  delayed  until  some  Japanese  agent 
discovers  the  buyer  and  offers  to  sell  him  similar  goods  at 
a  lower  price,  which  becomes  doubly  attractive  to  the 


MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

buyer  after  he  has  waited  in  vain  for  the  promised  ship 
ment  from  abroad. 

A  high  American  official,  stationed  for  fifteen  years  in 
Japan  and  there  engaged  in  government  work  which 
brought  him  constantly  into  dealings  with  all  sorts  of 
Japanese  manufacturers,  contractors,  and  tradesmen, 
told  me  that  the  dishonesty  of  the  bulk  of  these  people 
surpasses  belief.  Only  the  minutest  supervision  of  their 
every  move  protects  one  against  gross  fraud.  He  made 
the  further  statement  that  the  Japanese  business  crook 
differed  from  the  American  and  European  crook  in  one 
significant  manner.  The  American  or  European  would 
usually  use  all  cunning  in  so  phrasing  a  contract  as  to 
leave  a  number  of  convenient  loopholes  through  which 
he  might  crawl  out  with  dishonest  profits.  Could  he  not 
make  such  loopholes,  he  would  enter  into  the  agreement 
and  carry  it  out  as  specified  in  the  bond,  to  his  own 
great  credit.  The  Japanese  crook,  on  the  other  hand, 
believes  in  direct  action.  He  will  sign  any  sort  of  con 
tract  in  order  to  get  business,  but  if  he  finds  that  he  can 
make  more  money  by  breaking  the  contract  than  by  fol 
lowing  it,  he  breaks  it  as  blithely  as  he  would  break  a 
cracker. 

Californians  have  had  their  taste  of  such  ethics.  In 
the  past  season  these  methods  have  been  deftly  employed 
in  the  rice  country  around  Willows  and  Marysville, 
where  many  expert  rice  paddy  farmers  from  Nippon 
have  been  leasing  large  acreage  and,  down  to  this  season, 
getting  rich.  Rice  dropped  to  3l/2  cents  a  pound  at  the 
beginning  of  the  last  harvest,  which  was  a  fatal  level 
when  we  learn  that  the  cost  of  growing  it  was  about  5 
cents  a  pound  in  this  particular  district.  Now,  it  is 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  BUREAUCRACY          115 

plain  enough  that  any  farmer  confronted  with  such  a 
situation  is  amply  justified  in  refusing  to  increase  his 
losses  by  spending  time  and  money  in  harvesting  his  crop 
and  hauling  it  to  market,  where  some  speculator  stands 
ready  to  grab  it  for  nothing  and  hold  it  till  the  market 
rises.  Our  cotton  farmers  all  through  the  South  have 
been  following  this  course,  and  so  too  have  others.  But 
the  Japanese  went  further. 

They  left  their  rice  standing  and  moved  themselves  at 
top  speed.  With  goods  and  chattels  they  decamped  over 
night,  whither  no  man  knoweth.  This  would  not  have 
perturbed  the  good  people  of  Willows  and  Marysville 
but  for  the  fact  that  the  departed  had  forgotten  to  pay 
up  some  thousands  of  dollars  of  loans  which  local  bank 
ers  had  advanced  to  them  for  the  growing  of  rice.  One 
of  the  banks  that  carried  many  such  loans  has  recently 
failed,  as  a  consequence.  White  Californians  are  now 
wondering  whether  all  Japanese  farmers,  under  the  in 
fluence  of  the  American  environment,  are  forsaking  their 
old  ways  and  imitating  the  low  trader  class. 

This  crudity  betrays  a  very  primitive  development  of 
trade  ethics  that  we  might  expect  in  a  country  where,  as 
in  the  old  Germany,  the  tradesman  belonged  to  the  low 
est  caste  and  was  looked  down  upon  by  scholars  and 
statesmen  and  the  nobility.  This  unpleasant  peculiarity 
was  a  mark  of  a  class,  not  of  the  people  as  a  whole.  And 
it  was  almost  certainly  the  result  of  the  same  old  laws 
of  natural  selection  and  adaptation  which  we  see  every 
where  in  nature,  from  the  meanest  worm  up  to  the  high 
est  social  order.  In  Germany  and  Japan,  under  the 
old  culture,  men  of  high  moral  and  intellectual  ideals  and 
attainments  shunned  a  commercial  career  with  as  much 


116  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

loathing  as  every  bright  American  boy  raised  under 
an  economic  culture  avoids  the  ministry.  The  young 
men  who  were  not  stirred  by  religion  and  morals  and  love 
of  learning  stuck  to  trade;  and,  by  being  looked  down 
upon  by  the  upper  castes,  they  easily  fell  into  the  habit 
of  accepting  upper-caste  judgments  themselves.  The 
better  people  expected  traders  to  be  lowdown  scamps. 
They  treated  them  as  such.  And  the  traders  adapted 
themselves  to  this  attitude  by  being  scamps.  In  Japan 
even  to-day  we  still  find  the  ancient  Oriental  custom  of 
charging  several  times  as  much  for  an  article  as  it  is 
worth,  and  expecting  the  customer  to  "jew  one  down." 
The  quality  and  origin  of  goods  are  grossly  misrepre 
sented.  If  a  trader  enters  into  an  agreement  to  deliver 
goods,  and  later  finds  that  he  has  figured  too  closely  or 
that  the  market  has  changed  so  that  he  could  sell  else 
where  to  greater  advantage,  he  is  quite  likely  to  repudiate 
the  whole  transaction  flatly.  In  justice  to  the  older  Jap 
anese  export  firms,  it  must  be  said  here  that  such  evil 
practices  are  followed  mostly  by  Japanese  traders  who 
have  recently  gone  into  foreign  trade,  and  are  therefore 
ignorant  of  the  commercial  ethics  of  the  Western  world 
and  of  the  extent  to  which  world  traders  have  been  edu 
cated  up  to  the  modern  Anglo-Saxon  level  of  trade  mor 
ality.  Japanese  dealers  who  have  had  years  of  such  ex 
perience  are  too  sensible  to  try  the  old  Japanese  methods 
anywhere  in  the  British  Empire  or  in  the  United  States. 
Let  us  now  observe  the  way  this  identity  of  social 
ratings  works  at  the  top  of  the  caste  system.  In  Ger 
many  the  best  minds  were  drawn  into  scientific  research, 
teaching,  and  government  service  as  a  consequence  of  the 
sincere  belief  that  love  of  truth,  love  of  righteousness, 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  BUREAUCRACY          11? 

and  love  of  the  state  were  higher  and  finer  than  love  of 
personal  success  and  love  of  money.  And  with  what 
outcome  ? 

This  brings  us  to  the  next  parallel  between  Germany 
and  Japan,  which  is  one  to  which  few  Americans  have 
paid  due  attention. 

The  fourteenth  likeness  is  in  the  astonishing  concen 
tration  of  scientists  and  all  other  technical  experts  in  the 
service  of  the  state.  Pre-war  Germany  was  the  first  case 
of  this  in  all  history,  and  her  achievement  was  the  logi 
cal  outcome  of  two  forces.  The  old  social  system,  with 
its  praise  of  learning  and  statecraft,  created  the  desire 
of  a  career  of  learning  and  politics  in  the.  breasts  of  able 
men,  while  the  gratifying  of  this  desire  was  made  both 
possible  and  easy  on  a  large'  scale  by  the"  new  need  of 
industrializing  Germany  and  transforming  her  into  a 
world  power.  While  the  sentiments  of  the  old  order 
still  pulsed  strongly,  the  builders  of  the  new  and  harsher 
order  utilized  them  to  attract  the  intellectual  classes  into 
state  service.  Thus  Germany  became,  in  structure  and 
in  methods,  a.  titanic  corporation.  The  best  brains  of 
the  land  were  selected  and  given  posts  of  high  responsi 
bility.  The  great  executives  attached  to  themselves  im 
mense  staffs  of  specialists  and  used  their  wisdom  to  the 
utmost.  And  the  whole  world  to-day  knows  the  outcome 
only  too  well.  In  1914  Germany  was,  past  all  dispute, 
the  most  powerful  social  organization  ever  fashioned  in 
the  flesh,  and  but  for.  the  Germans'  inability  to  under 
stand-  the  workings  of  other  men's  minds,  they  would 
now  be  well  on  their  way  to  rule  the  world. 

Now,  in  every  detail,  Japan  to-day  duplicates  the 
best  of  that  old  German  structure  or  else  surpasses  it. 


11*  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

We  have  shown  that  the  entire  educational  system  there 
is  governmental.  So  all  the  experts  in  the  university  lab 
oratories  are  government  employees.  All  the  railways, 
telephones,  telegraphs,  the  tobacco  business,  the  salt 
monopoly,  the  camphor  industry  of  Formosa,  and  a  large 
majority  of  the  manufacturing  and  banking  concerns 
are  likewise  either  owned  outright  or  decisively  con 
trolled  by  the  Government.  Hence  all  the  thousands  of 
experts  in  these  many  lines  are  civil  servants.  All  this 
colossal  organization  centers  around  the  mikado,  from 
whom  all  authority  derives.  It  is  still  managed  by  the 
old  clans  and  their  Elder  Statesmen,  whose  model  of  ad 
ministration  is  not  the  British  Parliament  nor  the  Amer 
ican  Congress,  but  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation 
and  the  Standard  Oil  Company.  All  observers,  be  they 
friendly  or  hostile  to  Japan,  take  off  their  hats  to  the 
sheer  efficiency  of  this  super-Prussian  machine.  Its  ac 
complishments  in  Korea  alone  are,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  big  business,  magnificent. 

Some  of  these,  as  shown  in  the  Annual  Report  on  Re 
forms  and  Progress  (1917-1918)  issued  by  the  Govern 
ment-General  of  Korea,  deserve  a  brief  recital. 

In  December,  1918,  there  were  336,872  Japanese  in 
Korea,  of  whom  66,943  were  in  Seoul.  Under  their  guid 
ance  the  country  and  its  18,000,000  people  has  made 
remarkable  strides.  The  forest  resources  had  become 
depleted,  but  the  Japanese  have  set  out  473,195,976  trees 
there  and  are  still  continuing  in  the  work.  The  output 
of  the  Korean  coal  mines  has  almost  trebled  since  1910. 
Korean  foreign  trade  increased  from  59,000,000  yen  in 
1910  to  131,000,000  yen  in  1917.  The  telegraph  lines 
have  doubled  in  length,  and  the  1910  telephone  lines  of 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  BUREAUCRACY          119 

320  miles  have  grown  to  more  than  3,000  miles.  Railway 
mileage  in  Korea  has  doubled  under  Japanese  control. 
Banks  have  improved,  and  savings  have  been  encouraged ; 
the  latest  reports  show  an  increase  of  177,687  depositors 
in  a  single  year.  Agriculture  is  the  occupation  of  80  per 
cent,  of  the  Koreans,  and  therefore  particular  attention 
has  been  given  to  its  improvement.  Model  farms,  experi 
mental  stations,  and  training  stations  have  been  set  up  in 
many  centers  and  more  than  a  million  yen  is  expended  in 
this  way  annually.  Improvement  of  cities  has  pro 
gressed  steadily,  and  Seoul  is  now  one  of  the  best  paved 
cities  of  the  Orient.  The  cotton  acreage  increased  from 
1,123  cho  in  1910  to  48,000  cho  in  1917,  and  the  Japanese 
are  teaching  the  Korean  farmers  other  practically  new 
lines  such  as  fruit  trees,  sugar  beets,  hemp,  tobacco,  silk 
worms,  sheep  breeding  and  the  like.  Improvements  in 
health  conditions  effected  by  hygienic  inspection,  govern 
ment  hospitals  and  new  waterworks  everywhere  have 
been  remarkable. 

A  like  picture  could  be  drawn  of  Japan's  labors  in 
her  own  islands  and  in  Formosa.  And  all  would  go  to 
show  that  a  highly  centralized  government,  which  takes 
to  itself  all  powers  and  all  the  highly  trained  minds  in 
sight  and  utilizes  the  best  information  and  intelligence 
it  can  get,  can  plan,  organize,  and  accomplish  things  on 
a  scale  and  with  a  success  which  no  democracy,  operating 
true  to  form,  can  hope  to  match.  The  democracies  fight 
ing  Germany,  it  will  be  recalled,  managed  to  win  only  by 
giving  up  every  vestige  of  democracy  during  the  war. 

It  is  to  be  borne  in  mind,  while  we  are  on  our 
main  problem,  that  Japan,  like  pre-war  Germany,  is 
planning  her  national  policies  many,  many  years  ahead 


120  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

with  a  skill  and  a  detail  unknown  to  the  gentlemen  who 
make  speeches  in  Washington.  Her  rulers  do  not  come 
and  go  with  the  leap  years,  as  ours  do.  They  own  the 
country,  furthermore,  and  hence  are  intensely  interested 
in  everything  that  occurs  in  it,  whereas  our  Presidents 
and  congressmen  mostly  possess  little  more  than  their 
official  salaries,  a  few  depreciated  Liberty  bonds,  and  pos 
sibly  a  quarter-section  of  farm-land.  Not  even  in  the 
United  States  Senate  do  we  find  that  intimate  associa 
tion  of  personal  business  interests  and  national  arms  that 
is  normal  in  Japan. 

Just  as  Germany,  immediately  after  defeating  France 
in  1870,  set  out  with  full  deliberation  and  the  highest 
intelligence  to  become  a  world  power  and  planned  for 
the  next  war,  which  turned  out  to  be  half  a  century  off, 
so  too  Japan  to-day.  Every  move  of  her  officials  since 
she  vanquished  Russia  in  1904  reveals  the  same  far- 
sighted  program  of  becoming  for  Asia  what  the  United 
States  is  for  the  Americas,  the  overshadowing  force ;  and 
to-day,  while  our  alleged  statesmen  are,  because  of  our 
clumsy  democratic  forms  of  management,  thinking  ahead 
only  as  far  as  the  next  election  —  and  thinking  of  a  few 
scattered,  disjointed  pet  reforms  or  pet  bugbears  —  the 
Japanese  aristocracy  of  wealth  and  its  brother  aristocracy 
of  brains  are  pulling  together  in  excellent  team  work, 
their  eyes  fixed  on  the  year  1960  and  afterward.  What 
this  means  in  our  relations  to  Japan  must  be  evident.  It 
means  for  the  future  what  it  has  meant  for  the  past,  that 
our  Government  will  be  unable  to  cope  with  the  Japanese 
either  by  wit  or  by  force.  And  we  shall  go  on  doing 
what  President  Wilson  has  been  doing,  not  by  choice,  but 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  BUREAUCRACY          121 

by  necessity,  graciously  "allowing"  the  Japanese  to  work 
their  will  in  Asia.  Of  this  more  later.  It  can  be 
grasped  only  in  conjunction  with  the  next  point  of  re 
semblance  between  Japan  and  Germany. 


CHAPTER  12 
JAPAN'S  MILITARY  IMPREGNABILITY 

THE  fifteenth  likeness  between  these  two  feudalisms 
will  startle  all  readers.  It  is  a  parallel  which  a  few 
people  have  seen,  but  which  none  has  bruited  abroad. 
A  more  unpalatable  fact  could  hardly  be  dished  up  to 
the  average  American,  imbued  as  he  is  with  the  sweet 
thought  that  his  country  is  the  richest,  the  strongest,  and 
the  smartest  on  earth.  But  the  sooner  he  accepts  it  and 
acts  upon  it,  the  faster  will  the  chances  of  a  ghastly  and 
profitless  collision  between  Japan  and  the  United  States 
dwindle  to  zero. 

The  likeness  is  this: 

I  Japan  to-day  is  impregnable  against  enemies  from 
without,  just  as  Germany  was,  and  for  similar  reasons, 
geographical  and  economic.  In  this  respect  both  coun 
tries  are  like  the  United  States  and  Russia. 

The  reader  must  be  warned  against  an  easy  misappre 
hension  here.  It  is  well  known  that  insular  Japan  is 
wofully  lacking  in  natural  resources,  notably  minerals 
and  cotton,  which  are  indispensable  in  modern  warfare. 
And  the  statement  has  been  made  even  by  officers  of  the 
United  States  Navy  that  a  brief  blockade  maintained 
between  the  islands  of  Nippon  and  the  Asiatic  mainland 
would  precipitate  panic  and  collapse  throughout  Japan. 

122 


JAPAN'S  MILITARY  IMPREGNABILITY      123 

Doubtless  there  was  some  truth  in  such  a  theory  a  few 
years  ago,  but  events  have  moved  so  swiftly  of  late  that 
it  is  no  longer  tenable.  At  this  very  moment  Japan  is 
a  continental  power  greater  than  either  Germany  or 
France.  And,  so  far  as  a  purely  defensive  war  is  con 
cerned,  she  is  to-day  much  more  powerful  than  any  coun 
try  on  earth,  bar  only  the  United  States.  Even  Great 
Britain  is,  when  on  the  defense,  notably  more  vulnerable 
than  Japan,  because  of  her  lack  of  adjoining  continental 
territory  and  her  perilous  proximity  to  a  potentially  hos 
tile  or  at  least  neutral  mainland.  Let  us  inspect  this 
fact  more  closely. 

Korea  is  now  as  much  a  part  and  parcel  of  Japan  as 
Texas  is  a  part  of  our  own  nation.  Its  82,000  square 
miles  make  it  about  the  same  size  as  Great  Britain.  Its 
immense  coal  reserves,  still  largely  undeveloped  and  not 
of  the  highest  quality,  could  be  pressed  into  service  in  the 
event  of  war  quite  as  expeditiously  as  were  the  various 
resources  of  Europe  after  1914.  So,  too,  with  the  latent 
abundance  of  iron  and  the  modest  supplies  of  copper. 
So  too  with  the  imperfectly  exploited  agricultural  re 
sources,  which  have  been  estimated  to  be  capable  of  feed 
ing  about  seven  million  more  mouths  than  they  now  do. 
Furthermore,  it  would  be  easy  for  the  insular  Japanese 
to  secure  these  precious  supplies,  inasmuch  as  Korea  is 
completely  blanketed  against  all  attacks  by  sea  by  the 
myriad  islands  of  Japan  and  the  Korean  coast,  and 
against  all  attacks  from  the  north  by  the  immense 
mountain  ranges  and  inhospitable  plains  of  Manchuria, 
which  is  wholly  under  Japan. 

As  for  Manchuria  and  its  resources,  let  us  first  note 
that  it  is  almost  five  times  as  large  as  Korea,  very  rich 


124  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

in  minerals,  as  well  as  in  coal,  and  capable  of  growing  a 
considerable  amount  of  wheat,  barley,  millet,  and  similar 
crops.  With  a  population  of  only  twelve  millions,  this 
vast  province  might  be  forced  to  yield  immense  supplies 
for  a  defensive  war.  If  it  became  necessary,  Japan 
could  throw  a  million  workers  into  the  mines,  forests, 
fields,  and  fisheries  of  Korea  and  Manchuria  quite  as 
easily  as  Germany  and  Great  Britain  did  elsewhere  after 
1914.  Here  is  a  continental  tract  adjacent  to  Japan 
and  in  all  nearly  six  times  the  size  of  Great  Britain, 
sparsely  populated  and  naturally  rich,  even  though 
cursed  in  large  part  with  a  climate  which  the  Japanese 
dislike  and  do  not  thrive  in. 

It  may  aid  the  American  reader  in  grasping  the  true 
inwardness  of  this  situation  if  we  translate  it  into  Amer 
ican  geography.  Japan  proper  is  a  little  larger  than 
California.  Her  continental  possessions,  leaving  Shan 
tung  entirely  out  of  the  reckoning,  of  course  are  more 
than  three  times  the  size  of  California  and  are  much  more 
easily  developed,  particularly  in  agriculture.  Now, 
break  California  up  into  thousands  of  islands,  scatter 
these  from  two  to  four  hundred  miles  off  shore,  and  then 
give  her  absolute  dominion  over  our  whole  line  of  Pa 
cific  coast  States  and  Arizona.  Think  now  merely  of  a 
picture  of  Japan's  continental  power  in  defensive  war 
fare.  Later  we  shall  ask  you  to  consider  a  similar  pic 
ture  from  a  slightly  different  angle. 
.Before  the  World  War  there  was  some  slight  excuse 
ft  doubting  Japan's  impregnability,  although  anybody 
who  had  made  a  careful  study  of  the  Boer  War  and  the 
four-year  struggle  of  Germany  against  her  rebellious 
Hereros  could  have  known  it.  Both  of  these  lamentable 


JAPAN'S  MILITARY  IMPREGNABILITY       125 

fiascos  revealed  the  futility  of  even  the  greatest  naval 
and  military  powers  waging  war  single-handed  against 
even  a  weak  enemy  several  thousand  miles  overseas. 
Look  at  the  Boer  War  again.  From  first  to  last  the 
Boers  mustered  fewer  than  seventy-five  thousand  fighting 
men.  The  British  matched  this  total  at  the  outset,  and 
failed  miserably  to  make  even  a  dent.  They  then 
doubled,  and  fizzled  again.  Next  they  quadrupled,  and 
foozled  worse  than  ever.  Not  until  staggered  and  thor 
oughly  frightened  old  England  had  hurled  the  890,000th 
Tommy  Atkins  across  the  veldt  at  Oom  Paul  did  the  old 
gentleman  shift  his  quid  and  decide  that  it  might  be 
more  comfortable  to  go  back  to  the  farm.  All  of  this 
merely  proves  the  oldest  of  military  adages,  that  an  army 
fights  on  its  stomach,  or,  as  the  Germans  put  it,  "The 
soldier's  bayonet  reaches  no  farther  than  the  cook's 
skillet."  No  army  dares  wander  more  than  two  meals' 
distance  from  its  cooks,  and  rash  is  the  cook  who  gets 
out  of  sight  of  his  ultimate  pantry.  The  comment  of 
Germany's  military  experts  at  the  time  was  absolutely 
correct.  "If  the  Boers,"  they  wrote,  "had  been  sup 
ported  by  even  a  fourth-rate  navy,  they  could  have 
fought  the  whole  British  Empire  to  a  standstill.  An 
army  dependent  for  all  its  supplies  upon  a  land-and- 
water  rear  line  eight  thousand  miles  long  is  beaten  before 
the  first  shot  is  fired." 

The  Germans  tasted  the  gall  of  this  truth  only  a  few 
years  later.  A  few  thousand  Hereros  and  Hottentots 
resisted  the  Teuton  brand  of  imperialism  in  their  jungles, 
and  as  a  result  more  than  five  thousand  German  soldiers 
died  and  fifty-five  million  dollars  was  spent  on  a  cam 
paign  which  would  have  called  for  many  millions  more 


126  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

had  not  the  British  kindly  allowed  the  Cape  Colony  police 
to  come  to  the  aid  of  the  kaiser's  discouraged  cohorts. 

Americans,  who  at  that  time  were  babes  in  arms  when  it 
came  to  understanding  military  affairs,  missed  the  point. 
Koosevelt,  Mayor  McClellan  of  New  York,  Colonel 
Webb,  and  many  other  citizens  full  of  sincere  patriotism 
and  ignorance,  often  used  to  tell  us  how  Japan  might 
surreptitiously  land  a  few  hundred  thousand  troops 
in  California  some  evening  and  "have  us  at  her  mercy." 
They  used  to  relate  with  bated  breath  how  Germany 
would,  some  day  in  the  not  distant  future,  hurl  her  fleet 
into  New  York  Harbor,  follow  it  up  with  a  navy  of  trans 
ports,  land  two  million  Bodies,  and  make  slaves  of  us  all, 
incidentally  smashing  the  Monroe  Doctrine  into  a  mere 
mass  of  vowels  and  consonants.  And  even  after  the 
World  War  had  been  under  way  three  years  or  longer, 
these  nightmares  were  beautifully  woven  into  a  horrid 
texture  of  fiction  by  Cleveland  Moffett  and  printed  with 
solemn  warnings  from  the  editor  in  a  great  national 
magazine.  Yet  to  any  man  capable  of  coherent  reasoning 
the  first  year  of  the  World  War  completely  proved  the  ab 
surdity  of  long-distance  warfare  under  modern  condi 
tions,  and  the  wind-up  of  the  conflict  underlined  that 
same  proof  with  blood. 

Germany,  the  mightiest  military  engine  in  history,  was 
unable  to  drive  into  enemy  country  farther  than  two 
hundred  miles  from  her  main  bases  of  supply.  And 
France,  England,  and  Russia,  as  they  gathered  force 
against  the  invader,  were,  with  all  their  stupendous  man 
power  and  natural  resources,  unable  to  drive  even  half 
that  distance  into  Germany  up  to  the  very  moment  of 
Germany's  collapse,  which  was  brought  about  by  our 


JAPAN'S  MILITARY  IMPREGNABILITY      127 

flinging  into  the  almost  balanced  scales  four  million 
young  men  and  the  second  greatest  navy  in  the  world,  all 
fresh  and  game.  And  down  in  the  Mediterranean  we  saw 
the  magnificent  British  Navy,  backed  by  the  finest  green 
troops  ever  assembled,  struggle  desperately  around  Gal- 
lipoli,  month  in,  month  out,  against  a  relatively  small 
and  ridiculously  under-equipped  Turkish  force  that  was 
reasonably  close  to  its  base  of  supplies.  And  we  saw 
four  hundred  thousand  of  those  handsome  and  dashing 
Anzacs  die  on  those  hot,  bare  slopes,  while  the  dread 
noughts  slunk  away  baffled.  Even  if  the  boats  had  stuck 
it  out  and  won,  as  they  could  have  done  in  short  order, 
according  to  later  reports,  the  moral  of  the  lesson  would 
still  have  stood  unaltered. 

Look  closely  at  Japan,  her  power,  and  her  position. 
It  will  amaze  you,  unless  you  happen  to  have  thor 
oughly  mastered  the  geography  and  economics  of  Asia. 
In  the  strategic  potency  of  her  lands  there  is  only  one 
country  elsewhere  on  earth  at  all  comparable  with  her, 
and  that  is  the  United  States,  though  of  course  the  two 
lands  differ  enormously  in  their  economic  aspects.  Old 
Japan  is  a  vast  archipelago  that  completely  dominates 
the  mainland  of  Asia  for  more  than  twenty-five  hundred 
miles.  To  grasp  this  one  fact,  imagine,  if  you  will,  New 
foundland  and  all  the  islands  of  our  West  Indies,  from 
Cuba  down  to  the  tiniest  of  the  Bahamas,  scattered 
up  and  down  the  Atlantic  coast  from  Newfoundland  to 
Panama.  Put  them  from  two  to  four  hundred  miles  out 
at  sea,  sprinkle  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand  reefs  and 
rocks  at  inconvenient  spots  all  about  them,  make  most  of 
their  shores  sheer  cliffs,  then  put  on  them  sixty  million 
brisk,  seafaring  folk,  all  as  good  sailors  as  the  British 


128 


MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 


Insular  Japan's  strategic  position  as  represented  in  Atlantic 
geography. 

and  Scotch  and  all  perfectly  organized  under  a  mili 
taristic  autocracy.  Then  you  will  get  half  the  idea,  but 
only  half.  In  fact,  not  quite  half. 

Korea  is  a  peninsula  very  much  like  Florida  both  in 
size  and  strategic  bearings.  Like  Florida,  it  thrusts  out 
in  a  southerly  direction  from  the  mainland.  Like  Flor 
ida,  it  almost  wholly  dominates  the  most  important  seas 
on  its  continental  coast.  As  Florida  dominates  the  Gulf 
of  Mexico  both  at  Key  West  and  along  some  five  hundred 
miles  of  coast,  so  does  Korea  dominate  the  Yellow  Sea, 
which  is  the  chief  body  of  water  for  the  commerce  of 
northern  China.  Now,  to  complete  our  analogy,  please 


JAPAN'S  MILITARY  IMPREGNABILITY      129 

consider  that  these  islanders  off  the  Atlantic  coast  also 
own  and  have  militarized  all  of  our  present  Southern 
States  east  of  the  Mississippi.  Think  of  this  immense 
continental  tract  as  being  the  base  of  supplies  for  the 
islanders  and  well  stocked  with  railroads,  mines,  forests, 
and  developed  harbors.  Then  you  have  a  fair  picture  of 
modern  Japan. 

Japan  to-day  combines  the  military  pouter  of  old  Ger 
many,  the  naval  efficiency  of  Great  Britain  and  the  mag 
nificent  isolation  of  the  United  States. 

This  combination  of  advantages  and  powers  has  never 
appeared  before.  Not  even  the  wildest  anti-Japanese 
Jingoes  have  sensed  all  its  possibilities.  And  yet  it  is 
not  all.  Over  and  above  these  three  factors,  there  are 
two  others  that  reside  in  the  life  habits  of  the  Japanese 
people  and  are  a  tremendous  asset.  One  of  them  is  the 
peculiar  morale  of  feudalism,  to  which  we  have  already 
referred  in  another  connection.  The  other  is  the  low 
Japanese  standard  of  living. 

As  to  the  morale  of  feudalism,  we  need  dwell  but 
briefly  on  its  utility  in  war-time.  The  blind  allegiance 
of  the  German  masses,  even  the  Socialists,  through  the 
first  two  years  of  the  World  War  demonstrated  amply 
the  hypnotic  power  of  a  small  ruling  class  over  ignorant 
millions  who  sincerely  believed  that  God  gave  the  kaiser 
his  job  and  backed  the  German  nation.  In  Japan  this 
same  power  manifested  itself,  to  the  amazement  of  all 
Europe,  when  the  mikado  fought  the  immense  armies  of 
Russia  to  a  standstill  from  Port  Arthur  to  Mukden. 


CHAPTER  13 

MILITARY  ADVANTAGE  OP  LOW  STANDARD  OF 
LIVING 

AS  to  the  military  advantages  of  the  low  standard  of 
living  in  Japan,  too  few  Americans  realize  how 
heavily  it  would  count  in  the  favor  of  Japan  in  any  war 
with  an  European  or  American  army.  It  is  easy  to  fall 
into  the  error  of  supposing  that  the  better  a  man  eats  and 
the  better  care  he  takes  of  himself,  physically  and  men 
tally,  the  tougher  and  stronger  he  is  bound  to  be  as  a 
soldier  in  the  field.  People  who  think  this  also  reason 
conversely  that  the  less  a  man  has  in  the  way  of  food  and 
comforts,  the  nearer  he  must  be  to  weakness  and  to  a  col 
lapse  of  morale.  This  double  fallacy  has  been  amusingly 
exhibited  in  the  reports  which  virtually  every  American 
observer  and  newspaper  correspondent  has  sent  home 
from  Russia,  telling  about  the  " impending  collapse"  of 
the  Bolshevik  armies. 

These  reports  all  run  to  one  pattern.  The  observer 
goes  to  a  camp  or  he  sees  troops  marching  through  a 
town.  He  notes  that  the  "wretches"  are  eating  black 
bread  soaked  in  hot  water  that  is  called  "soup"  because 
fish  has  been  boiled  in  it.  He  watches  them  chew  kasha, 
or  bird-seed,  and  wash  it  down  with  tea  as  pale  as  star 
light.  He  sees  their  feet  wrapped  in  tattered  burlap  that 
is  caked  black  with  old  blood,  and  he  shudders  as  he  be 
holds  their  filthy  shirts.  So,  thinking  in  terms  of  back 

130 


LOW  STANDARD  OF  LIVING  131 

home,  lie  promptly  writes  to  his  editor  that  "the  Bolshe 
vik  forces  are  on  the  point  of  dissolution  as  a  result  of 
famine  and  misery.  It  is  impossible  for  Lenine  and 
Trotzsky  to  hold  those  suffering  dupes  in  the  ranks  for 
another  month." 

We  have  been  hearing  just  such  reports  now  for  six 
years,  and  yet  the  Russian  wretches  seem  to  go  on  more 
serenely  than  ever.  They  do  not  seem  to  pay  the  slight 
est  attention  to  our  prophets.  And  why?  Well,  the 
trouble  is  that  our  prophets  do  not  understand  either 
biology  or  psychology.  They  may  be  clever  in  dashing 
off  "human  interest"  stories  and  getting  interviews  with 
great  men;  but  when  it  comes  to  understanding  human 
nature  or  any  nature,  they  are  lost  in  impenetrable  dark 
ness.  Apparently  they  have  never  even  observed  the 
striking  differences  of  behavior  between  a  mongrel  dog 
and  a  well-nurtured  collie  of  the  best  family.  They  have 
never  been  struck  by  the  difference  between  a  ragman's 
nag  and  a  thoroughbred  horse  that  has  always  had  all  the 
oats  and  grass  and  currying  that  were  good  for  it.  And, 
if  they  have  made  such  observations,  they  have  not  seen 
that  the  same  law  that  works  in  horses  and  dogs  also 
works  in  men.  It  is  the  general  law  of  the  relation  be 
tween  adaptation,  habit,  and  sensitivity.  Later  in  this 
volume  we  shall  find  occasion  to  scrutinize  this  law  in 
some  detail.  At  present  we  may  state  it  roughly,  in  the 
form  that  applies  to  the  Japanese  military  situation. 

The  more  easily  any  creature's  life  habits  are  broken 
down,  the  more  easily  is  its  whole  set  of  adjustments 
thrown  mit  of  gear. 

In  general,  it  is  the  higher  habit  adjustments  that 
break  down  first,  and  the  collapse,  if  any,  proceeds  from 


132  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

the  highest  and  most  recently  acquired  habits  down  to  the 
lowest  and  earliest  acquired. 

The  highest  of  all  adjustments  are  quickly  disturbed 
by  any  continued  interference  with  the  lowest  adjust 
ments.  Thus,  all  those  thoughts  and  ideals  which  are 
bound  up  with  what  we  call  "morals"  and  "loyalty"  and 
"patriotism"  .are  among  the  first  to  be  affected  in 
juriously  by  upsetting  food  habits,  sleep  habits,  and  the 
like. 

These  statements  are,  be  it  remembered,  only  rough 
approximations.  They  need  considerable  qualification 
before  being  applied  generally.  But  they  are  accurate 
enough  to  illustrate  the  great  advantage  Japan  would 
have  in  any  war  with  the  United  States. 

What  the  human  system  can  do,  if  trained  to  endure 
hardship  and  under-nourishment,  few  Americans  realize. 
Let  them  consider  an  old  custom  among  the  peasants  of 
the  province  of  Pskov,  in  Russia,  where  we  find  a  kind  of 
hibernating  that  almost  rivals  the  well-known  achieve 
ments  of  the  bear. 

This  custom  is  known  as  lotska,  or  "winter  sleep/' 
When  cold  weather  comes,  the  peasant  family  of  the 
poorer  sort  gathers  around  the  stove,  lies  down,  and  goes 
to  sleep.  Once  a  day  everybody  wakes  and  eats  a  hunk 
of  bread,  which  has  been  prepared  in  quantity  for  the 
long  winter  siege.  The  bread  is  washed  down  with  a 
little  water,  then  the  hibernator  goes  back  to  sleep.  With 
but  little  variation  this  semi-starving  is  kept  up  for  the 
six  bitter,  dark  months,  and  when  spring  breaks,  these 
gaunt  but  healthy  muzhiks  go  out  of  doors,  stretch  them 
selves,  and  resume  work  and  the  square  meal. 


LOW  STANDARD  OF  LIVING  133 

While  this  custom  is  not  followed  by  the  Asiatics  gen 
erally,  it  is  none  the  less  typical  of  the  endurance  which 
is  all  but  universal  among  the  Mongols  and  Tatars. 
Many  observers  have  told  us  in  copious  detail  about  the 
fierce  ruggedness  of  the  Chinese,  whose  resistance  to 
many  forms  of  infection  surpasses  belief.  And  the 
meager,  monotonous  diet  of  fish,  millet  and  rice  on  which 
most  Asiatics  thrive  from  birth  to  death  is  familiar  to  all 
of  us.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  represents  no  pe 
culiar  racial  power,  but  rather  the  result  of  natural  se 
lection  and  that  same  high  adaptability  to  circumstances 
which  most  men  who  survive  the  hardships  of  childhood 
possess. 

The  food  habits  and  the  sleep  habits  of  the  Japanese 
are  both  very  much  more  primitive  than  our  own.  The 
average  American  eats  about  1900  pounds,  dry  weight, 
of  food  in  a  year;  and  this  in  very  great  variety.  The 
ordinary  Japanese  eats  900  pounds,  and  it  is  almost  ex 
clusively  rice  and  fish.  Hence,  to  prevent  any  serious 
disturbance  arising  from  the  reduction  of  the  volume  of 
food  to  which  each  human  stomach  is  rather  delicately 
adjusted,  our  War  Department  would  have  to  deliver 
more  than  twice  as  much  food  as  the  Japanese  would, 
man  for  man.  Hence  also  the  chances  of  our  own  men 
weakening  and  collapsing  as  a  result  of  going  hungry 
would  be  much  greater  than  in  the  case  of  the  Japanese. 
For  going  hungry  and  under-nourished  is  a  habit  just  as 
definitely  as  playing  tennis  is.  It  is  a  very  intricate 
l>\ody  adjustment.  It  is  established  in  millions  of  Asiatics 
and  by  the  process  of  eliminating  those  who  cannot  ad 
just,  the  surviving  population  of  Asia  has  a  degree  of 


MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

endurance  far  beyond  that  of  the  high-standard  Amer 
ican. 

So,  too,  with  sleep  habits.  The  ordinary  Japanese 
farmer,  his  wife,  and  his  children  work  at  a  pace  that  no 
American  can  match,  and  their  sleep  habits  are  corre 
spondingly  harsher  and  lower.  The  whole  family  arises 
before  the  sun  is  up,  toils  all  day,  goes  home,  and  there 
toils  well  into  the  night.  Robertson  Scott,  an  able  Eng 
lish  journalist  who  has  been  in  Japan  studying  the  farm 
life  there  for  the  past  few  years,  gives  a  vivid  picture  of 
the  peasant's  day  and  night  in  a  recent  issue  of  "Asia." 
Fourteen  or  even  sixteen  hours  a  day  the  relentless  drive 
in  the  rice-fields  keeps  up,  and  at  nightfall 

"The  Japanese  farmer  does  not  escape  his  task-master  even 
when  he  returns  home.  His  house  is  his  tool-shed  and  often 
his  store.  At  his  door  or  close  to  it,  rice  is  husked  by  being 
drawn  through  iron  teeth,  and  is  polished  by  being  pounded  in 
wooden  mortars  with  wooden  mallets,  sometimes  worked  by 
foot-power  and  a  weight.  Here,  also,  the  farmer  and  his  fam 
ily  may  winnow  their  barley  primitively  by  casting  it  into  the 
air.  Round  about,  the  giant  radish  and  other  vegetables  are 
hung  to  dry.  Indoors  there  may  be  the  drying  of  the  tea  to 
look  after,  silk  worms  to  care  for,  the  silk  of  late  or  inferior 
cocoons  to  spin,  or  pickling  of  vegetables  to  attend  to." 

They  go  to  sleep  on  the  floor,  with  a  block  of  wood  or 
a  porcelain  cube  for  a  pillow.  There  is  no  heating  system 
of  any  kind  in  winter,  but  plenty  of  fleas  and  smells  in 
summer.  The  brief  and  over-polite  account  Scott  gives 
of  sleeping  conditions  shows  the  gulf  between  the  East 
and  West. 

"Next  to  fleas,  the  chief  trouble  in  hot  weather  is  the  way 
the  police  insist  that  houses  be  closely  shut  up  at  night  to 


LOW  STANDARD  OF  LIVING  135 

avoid  burglary.  Since  the  sanitary  arrangements  are  inside 
the  house  and  are  made  in  the  interests  of  agriculture  ex 
clusively,  the  situation  may  be  a  bit  trying.  But  an  elementary 
acquaintance  with  agricultural  bacteriology  makes  it  plain  that 
an  unpleasant  smell  is  not  lethal." 

Now,  it  requires  no  lengthy  argument  to  make  evident 
that  men  who  have  been  thoroughly  accustomed  to  sleep 
ing  on  the  floor  in  a  cold  room  in  a  country  where  the 
winters  are  raw  and  even  bitter  and  where  the  summers 
are  hot,  smelly,  and  flea-bitten  will  be  much  less  upset 
in  health  and  in  comfort  and  in  morale  than  men  who 
belong  to  a  labor-union  that  forbids  them  to  work  more 
than  eight  hours  a  day ;  who  spend  their  evenings  at  the 
movies  or,  in  the  country,  listening  to  the  talking-ma 
chine  or  to  corner-grocery  politics;  who  retire  in  winter 
in  a  room  heated  with  a  furnace  and  in  summer  screened 
against  all  insects;  who  sleep  on  a  soft  mattress  under 
heavy  woolen  blankets  and  light  cotton  ones  in  season; 
and  who  shave  and  wash  at  a  wash-stand  equipped  with 
running  water,  hot  and  cold.  t 

Here  we  have  one  of  the  main  causes  of  the  astonishing 
fact  that  the  low  Russian  muzhiks,  who  have  been  abused 
more  than  any  other  of  the  European  people  since  1914, 
have  suffered  less  in  either  health  or  morale.  This  same 
fact  makes  it  certain  that  the  Japanese  peasant  would 
outlast  the  average  American  in  a  prolonged  contest  of 
arms  to  the  same  degree  that  the  Russians  have  outlasted 
the  other  Europeans. 

Here  we  come  upon  the  great  paradox  of  civilization. 
The  very  virtues  and  achievements  of  a  high  culture 
stand  in  the  way  of  defending  it  in  warfare  against  a 
low  culture  in  so  far  as  the  war  of  defense  becomes  a  war 


136  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

of  endurance.  We  cannot  discuss  here  the  many  bear 
ings  of  this  strange  complication,  but  some  of  them  will 
speedily  become  apparent  as  we  inquire  into  the  probable 
development  of  war  between  Japan  and  the  United 
States. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

WHAT  WOULD  WAR  BETWEEN  JAPAN  A1STD  THE 
UNITED   STATES   INVOLVED 

We  have  just  glanced  at  Japan's  strategic  and  ma 
terial  and  human  assets,  and  have  some  idea  of  what  they 
would  mean  to  her  in  the  event  of  war. 

And  now  for  another  picture,  and  this  time  one  which 
millions  of  Americans  will  have  no  difficulty  whatever 
in  constructing  out  of  recent  vivid  experiences. 

The  main  base  of  supplies  for  the  United  States — that 
is,  the  actual  zone  of  munitions  production — is  the  north 
eastern  quarter  of  our  country,  say  north  and  east  of 
Topeka,  Kansas.  It  is  from  this  region  that  probably 
three-quarters  of  all  the  freight  for  an  overseas  army 
would  be  shipped.  Now,  let  us  make  a  simple  suppo 
sition.  Let  us  go  back  in  imagination  to  the  spring  of 
1914.  Let  us  suppose  that  an  archduke  had  been  mur 
dered  not  in  Sarajevo,  but  in  Milwaukee,  and  not  by  a 
Bosnian,  but  by  a  Yankee  who  hated  the  Prussians.  Let 
us  further  suppose  that,  for  reasons  of  high  strategy, 
the  kaiser's  expert  advisers  thought  the  time  ripe  to 
trick  us  into  war  and  break  down  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 
To  this  end  they  retaliated  instantly  by  seizing  and  put 
ting  to  death  every  American  then  whiling  in  Germany 
and  confiscated  all  their  property  for  the  delicate  pur- 

137 


138  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 


"An  unbroken  chain  of  islands  (the  Kuriles,  Japan 
proper,  the  Loochoo  Archipelago,  Formosa  and  the  Pes 
cadores)  extending  from  Kamchatka  to  the  Tropics  com 
pletely  dominates  the  maritime  approaches  to  the  north 
ern  provinces  of  China,  to  Korea,  and  to  Asiatic  Russia. 
The  naval  station  of  Tsuhshima  commands  the  passage 
between  Klusin  and  Korea,  and  cuts  the  communications 
between  Port  Arthur  and  Vladivostok.  The  Pescadores, 
which  contain  some  very  good  harbors,  control  the  For 
mosa  channel  and  the  routes  to  Shanghai  from  Europe. 
The  harbors  and  naval  stations  of  Japan  herself  are 
among  the  finest  in  the  world;  her  important  seaside 
cities  are  situated  on  bays  and  fjords  whose  entrances 
can  be  mined  and  fortified;  they  are  so  well  defended  by 
nature  and  design  that  in  time  of  war  almost  the  whole 
of  the  Japanese  Navy  could  be  made  available  for  offen 
sive  operations  abroad  without  serious  anxiety  for  the 
safety  of  her  homeland!" — Admiral  Fletcher. 


pose  of  leading  us  to  attack  them  on  the  home  grounds. 
Finally,  suppose  that  we  were  fools  enough  to  do  so. 
What,  then  ?  What  if  we  did  attack  Germany,  while  all 
the  other  powers  held  their  peace  and  watched  the  war, 
neutral  in  thought  as  well  as  in  act  ? 

Is  there  any  A.  E.  F.  private  or  officer,  or  even  a 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  canteenist  who  has  the  slightest  doubt  as  to 
the  outcome  of  such  a  war?  Would  anybody  venture 
to  deny  that,  if  we  were  mad  enough  to  persist  in  such 
an  undertaking,  we  would  be  involved  in  ruin  so  com 
plete  that  even  Germany 's  plight  to-day  would  seem  com 
fortable  in  contrast  ?  In  an  offensive  war,  which  is  much 
harder  than  a  defensive  one,  the  Germans  deadlocked 


MANCHURIA 


J Luzon 


139 


140  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

four  great  powers  in  coalition  against  her  for  three  years, 
and  then,  with  her  submarines,  might  have  won,  but  for 
the  greatest  power  of  all  coming  in  against  her.  Sup 
pose  she  had  stayed  within  her  own  bounds  and  awaited 
our  coming!  Suppose  we  had  gone  against  her  without 
an  ally !  Let  us  draw  a  curtain  over  that  vision. 

Now,  all  this  is  no  idle  fantasy.  It  has  the  most  real, 
the  most  solemn  significance. 

Japan  is  twice  as  far  from  America's  ultimate  base  of 
supplies  as  Germany  is.  Hence,  on  the  most  conserva 
tive  basis  of  estimating  such  matters,  Japan  would  be 
four  times  as  difficult  to  attack  on  her  own  ground  as 
Germany  would  be. 

If  it  took  890,000  British  soldiers  to  conquer  75,000 
Boers  who  had  no  navy  at  all,  it  would  take  at  least  as 
many  Americans  to  defeat  every  75,000  Japanese  pro 
tected  on  their  own  ground  by  a  modern  navy  and  the 
most  highly  organized  militarism  in  the  world. 

As  Japan  would  easily  put  an  army  of  5,000,000  in  the 
field  for  a  defensive  war,  the  United  States  would  have 
to  send  against  her  eventually  an  army  at  least  66  times 
as  large  as  the  British  sent  against  the  Boers.  That 
would  mean  an  American  expeditionary  force  of  a  mere 
58,740,000  men. 

In  one  sense,  of  course,  such  arithmetic  is  ludicrous. 
But  it  gains  sober  significance  when  considered  in  the 
light  of  the  facts  adduced  by  Japanese  military  authori 
ties  in  their  defense  of  the  Empire's  refusal  to  send 
troops  to  the  French  front  during  the  World  War.  The 
simple  evidence  as  to  difficulties  and  costs  of  transpor 
tation  was  quite  enough  to  convince  any  fair  critic  that 
the  Japanese  were  wholly  in  the  right. 


WHAT  WOULD  WAR  INVOLVE?  141 

From  Yokohama  to  Marseilles  is  over  9,000  marine 
miles,  by  way  of  Suez,  while  from  New  York  to  Bordeaux 
is  3,187.  The  Japanese  showed  that  from  three  to  four 
times  as  much  tonnage  would  be  required  to  move  their 
troops  to  the  Western  front  as  would  be  needed  for 
American  troops ;  and  that  the  maintenance  of  a  line  of 
supplies  for  such  overseas  troops  would  cost  from  five  to 
ten  times  as  much  as  the  United  States  would  be  obliged 
to  spend.  Their  estimates  are  based  on  the  very  con 
servative  basis  of  allowing  six  ship  tons  per  man  to 
transport  and  continuously  support  an  army.  Had 
every  available  ship  of  Japan,  over  and  above  those  in 
dispensable  to  feeding  her  own  people,  been  pressed  into 
such  transport  service,  she  could  not  have  sent  and  kept 
more  than  100,000  troops  in  France. 

Now  please  bear  in  mind  two  things  that  are  beyond 
all  dispute:  first,  that  the  gross  haulage  from  our  own 
bases  to  Japanese  waters  is  nearly  as  long  as  from  Japan 
to  France ;  for  we  cannot  take  San  Francisco  but  rather 
some  Middle  Western  or  Gulf  Coast  point  as  the  true 
point  of  origin  for  both  soldiers  and  supplies;  and  sec 
ondly,  that  the  American  soldier  eats  more  than  twice  as 
much  as  the  Japanese  and  requires  from  three  to  ten 
times  as  much  of  various  other  supplies,  such  as  clothing, 
as  is  shown  in  some  detail  in  the  Appendix.  From  this 
it  follows  inexorably  that  we  should  have  to  allow  at  least 
eighteen  tons  per  man  for  the  handling  of  any  body  of 
troops  between  our  center  of  population  and  the  Far 
East. 

On  paper,  we  possessed  on  October  1,  1920,  the  im 
mense  array  of  3,404  vessels  of  more  than  750  deadweight 
tons,  totalling  16,918,212  tons.  A  stupendous  fleet,  you 


142  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

may  say  with  pride.  But  suppose  every  ship  in  it  could 
be  instantly  put  into  transport  service,  to  move  and  to 
feed  an  army  anywhere  west  of  Guam,  be  it  the  Philip 
pines,  China,  Korea,  or  Japan.  The  supposition  is  ridic 
ulous,  I  know,  but  let  it  pass  for  argument 's  sake.  What 
sort  of  an  army  could  we  maintain  at  that  range  ? 

Precisely  939,900  men !     Not  one  more ! 

Of  course,  in  reality,  not  more  than  one-half  of  that 
fleet  could  be  diverted  to  such  a  purpose  during  the  first 
year  of  a  Far  Eastern  war.  Not  only  do  we  lack  officers 
and  seamen  and  Western  terminal  facilities  for  loading 
and  unloading  such  a  horde  of  vessels ;  but  we  could  not 
cut  off  our  trade  with  the  rest  of  the  world  so  abruptly, 
as  we  depend  on  merchantmen  for  many  basic  supplies. 
At  the  end  of  a  year  of  the  most  strenuous  and  costly 
reorganization,  coupled  with  much  more  shipbuilding,  we 
might  have  the  equivalent  of  that  fleet  in  the  Far  Eastern 
service.  And  during  this  year,  we  should  find  ourselves 
confronted,  so  far  as  Japan  is  concerned,  with  a  powerful 
navy  operating  in  its  home  waters,  behind  a  tremendous 
mine  barrage  and  backed  up  by  an  army  of  from  3,000,- 
000  to  5,000,000  soldiers,  all  intrenched  behind  excellent 
land  fortifications. 

Whoever  is  in  doubt  as  to  what  this  means  is  once  more 
invited  to  put  it  all  in  the  scene  of  a  familiar  debacle, 
Gallipoli.  Great  Britain  sent  her  finest  ships  to  force 
the  Dardanelles.  She  lost  400,000  of  the  finest  Anglo- 
Saxon  troops  in  the  vain  attempt.  She  was  able  to  con 
centrate  on  one  point.  She  had  her  whole  sea  way  clear 
from  Portsmouth  to  the  scene  of  battle,  with  never  a  hos 
tile  battleship  to  dispute  her  nor  anywhere  a  mine  bar 
rage.  And  she  was  confronted  with  a  small  Turkish 


WHAT  WOULD  WAR  INVOLVE?  143 

force  that  was  fairly  well  officered  and  indifferently 
equipped  with  defensive  artillery. 

Now,  put  behind  the  trenches  of  Gallipoli,  not  a  Turk 
ish  force  of  a  few  divisions  but  the  whole  Japanese  army. 
Equip  the  forts,  not  with  a  few  medium  guns,  but  with 
the  total  output  of  the  Japanese  factories.  And,  instead 
of  leaving  the  sea  way  to  the  Dardanelles  clear,  turn  loose 
one  of  the  three  best  navies  in  the  world  and  a  large  mine 
laying  fleet  of  fishing  boats.  And  finally  send  our  troops 
against  such  a  foe,  not  by  the  millions,  but  in  driblets  of 
a  hundred  thousand  or  so  every  few  months.  For  bear 
in  mind  what  every  A.  B.  F.  corporal  now  knows,  namely, 
that  before  an  army  can  be  managed  on  a  foreign  shore, 
you  have  to  build  whole  towns  and  railroads  and  ware 
houses  to  care  for  them  and  their  munitions.  We  should 
have  to  erect  somewhere  in  the  Far  East  establishments 
not  unlike  those  stupendous  triumphs  of  engineering  effi 
ciency  which  we  put  up  at  Brest  and  Bordeaux.  There 
is  only  one  place  where  we  could  perform  this  task 
without  the  gravest  peril  of  a  surprise  capture,  or  at 
least  an  effective  blockade ;  and  that  is  in  the  neighbor 
hood  of  Manila.  There  we  have  to-day  the  nucleus  of  a 
military  and  naval  base. 

No  doubt,  most  Americans  think  of  Manila  as  a  most 
convenient  point  for  waging  war  against  Japan.  In  this 
they  betray  the  same  ignorance  of  geography  which, 
until  very  recently,  has  been  only  too  familiar  to  all  edu 
cators  and  is  the  sure  mark  of  provincialism.  They  do 
not  realize  that,  so  far  as  location  is  concerned,  Manila 
is  about  as  useful  as  a  base  for  war  against  Japan  as 
Halifax  is  as  a  base  of  operations  against  Jacksonville, 
Florida.  And  in  other  respects  Manila  suffers  by  com- 


144  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

parison  with  Halifax.  It  is  more  than  2,000  miles  from 
Japan 's  main  harbors  and  towns,  as  well  as  from  Japan 's 
bases  in  Korea.  And  between  Manila  and  these  vulner 
able  spots  lies  Formosa,  which  may  be  called,  without 
serious  exaggeration,  the  Gibraltar  of  the  China  Sea ;  and 
beyond  Formosa  there  strings  along  in  a  general  north 
erly  direction  the  Luchu  Islands,  all  Japanese,  and  scores 
of  them  ideal  bases  for  patrols,  submarines,  mine  layers, 
and  wireless  stations.  The  entire  west  coast  of  Formosa 
is  unapproachable,  a  sheer  stretch  of  cliffs  above  a  wild 
sea  that  is  the  very  heart  of  the  typhoon  area;  and  the 
east  coast  has  only  one  important  harbor,  that  admirably 
fortified  and  supported  by  a  sizable  garrison  which  could 
be  increased  tenfold  in  less  time  than  the  swiftest  Ameri 
can  destroyer  could  travel  from  San  Diego  to  Manila. 
While  nothing  definite  is  known  as  to  the  present  magni 
tude  of  the  forces  Japan  maintains  there,  various  observ 
ers  testify  that  the  number  must  run  into  the  tens  of 
thousands,  if  one  judges  from  the  detachments  and  en 
campments  visible  along  the  shore. 

For  a  considerable  fraction  of  the  year,  naval  opera 
tions  of  a  sustained  character,  such  as  a  blockade,  are 
quite  impossible  in  the  typhoon  belt  of  the  Western  Pa 
cific;  and,  as  the  only  hope  of  success  in  a  war  against 
Japan  would  inevitably  rest  -upon  blockade,  it  would 
appear  that  climate,  as  well  as  geography,  must  be  a 
faithful  ally  of  the  Mikado.  And  it  would  hamper  the 
Americans  on  land,  as  well  as  on  sea ;  for  the  wet  season 
around  Manila  would  shatter  the  morale  of  any  large 
body  of  American  troops  in  short  order,  as  any  old  Reg 
ular  who  has  seen  Philippine  service  knows  only  too  well. 
As  for  the  possibilities  of  epidemic,  they  are  so  great  that 


WHAT  WOULD  WAR  INVOLVE?  145 

it  is  painful  to  discuss  them.  With  all  our  remarkable 
resources,  physical  and  mental,  for  maintaining  public 
health,  we  should  be  strained  beyond  the  breaking  point 
by  the  task  of  caring  for  half  a  million  or  more  young 
men  in  the  steam-bath  temperatures  of  the  Philippines, 
where  all  the  diseases  of  the  Orient,  though  well  checked, 
still  lurk  in  many  a  nook. 

All  this  is  a  gloomy  picture  for  any  militarist  to  con 
template.  Let  us  turn  from  it  to  the  prosier  side  of  such 
a  hypothetical  war.  How  about  the  cost?  How  deep 
would  taxpayers  have  to  dig  into  their  already  depleted 
pockets,  to  foot  the  bills  of  such  a  mad  enterprise  ?  Ob 
viously  such  a  general  question  has  no  answer.  Every 
thing  depends  upon  how  long  the  citizens  would  tolerate 
a  war.  They  probably  would  not  endure  it  ten  minutes, 
in  their  present  mood.  But,  for  argument's  sake,  we 
may  conceive  that,  at  some  not  infinitely  distant  date, 
they  might  be  persuaded  to  let  matters  run  along  their 
bloody  grooves  for  a  year  or  two,  just  as  the  blind  British 
did  with  the  Boers  in  South  Africa.  What  would  one 
year  of  such  a  policy  cost  us? 

Considering  the  immense  distances  involved,  we  are 
safe  in  saying  that  the  expenses  per  man  would  be  at 
least  three  times  as  heavy  as  those  incurred  recently  in 
France.  Now,  our  Treasury  Department  announced  last 
December  that  the  net  cost  of  the  World  War  to  our 
Government  (excluding  all  foreign  loan  advances  and 
other  items  not  exclusively  military  or  naval)  totalled 
$24,010,000,000.  While  technically  the  period  covered 
by  this  outlay  extended  from  April  6,  1917,  down  to 
June  30, 1920,  it  may  be  truly  taken  to  represent  roughly 
two  years  of  actual  warfare  and  demobilization.  Thus 


146  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

we  may  set  the  cost  of  a  year  of  war  at  something  like 
twelve  billions.  The  fact  that,  if  we  went  to  war  again 
within  a  few  years,  a  good  deal  of  the  equipment  and 
buildings  bought  in  the  late  war  could  be  used  over  need 
not  be  considered;  for  we  assume,  as  everybody  must, 
that  we  shall  have  no  new  war  of  first  magnitude  for  a 
good  many  years  to  come. 

But  this  is  not  all.  In  a  war  which  we  waged  alone, 
we  should  have  to  reckon  entirely  upon  our  own  ships, 
both  war  vessels  and  merchantmen.  We  should  have  no 
British  armada  and  "lime  juicers"  to  convoy  our  trans 
ports  and  fight  for  us  while  we  were  getting  ready.  In 
the  briefest  possible  time  we  should  have  to  deflect  the 
greatest  possible  number  of  our  freight  boats  to  the  war 
service.  And  this  would  result  in  a  tremendous  reduc 
tion  of  our  highly  profitable  foreign  trade.  It  is  im 
possible  to  estimate  how  much  of  this  commerce  would 
slip  away  from  us ;  but  it  is  worth  noting  that  our  gross 
overseas  business  for  the  year  ending  June  30,  1920, 
reached  the  dizzy  peak  of  $13,349,661,000 ;  and  of  this 
argosy  American  bottoms  carried  $5,071,905,981, — or  a 
shade  better  than  $44  out  of  every  $100  handled  in  and 
out  of  our  ports.  It  would  be  safe,  I  dare  say,  to  assume 
that  we  should  lose  at  least  one-third  of  this  whole  for 
eign  trade  as  a  result  of  the  Government's  withdrawing 
our  merchantmen  from  commerce  and  requisitioning  mu 
nitions  for  war  purposes.  We  should  then  have  the  exact 
reverse  of  the  situation  precipitated  by  the  World  War, 
namely,  the  heaviest  of  bans  upon  outbound  shipments 
and  a  premium  upon  certain  imports  needed  for  war; 
with  the  result  that  both  our  farmers  and  our  manufac 
turers  would  suffer  severely.  Counting  in  the  deprecia- 


WHAT  WOULD  WAR  INVOLVE?  147 

tion  on  our  ships  during-  a  year  of  war  and  other  second 
ary  items,  we  would  find  ourselves  out  of  pocket  to  the 
tune  of  fifteen  billions  or  more  at  the  end  of  the  first 
twelvemonth  of  hostilities. 

The  military  history  of  the  Boer  War,  the  Herero  re 
bellion  in  German  Southwest  Africa,  the  Russo-Japanese 
War,  our  own  campaign  in  the  Philippines,  the  Gallipoli 
expedition,  and  the  World  War  in  general  all  prove  un 
mistakably  one  great  fact;  they  prove  that  no  war  car 
ried  on  at  long  range  can  get  under  way  in  much  less 
than  a  year  and  requires  at  the  very  least  another  year 
or  two  to  reach  some  decision.  The  sheer  volume  of 
organization  is  staggering,  and  the  jamming  and  lost  mo 
tion  involved  in  every  immense  emergency  enterprise 
managed  by  hundreds  of  men  new  to  the  job  and  raw 
in  their  outlook  and  policies  can  never  be  forestalled 
appreciably.  Army  and  Navy  officers  with  whom  I  have 
discussed,  the  master  are  convinced,  from  their  recent 
experiences,  that  a  Far  Eastern  war,  once  seriously 
undertaken,  would  have  to  run  on  for  at  least  three  years 
in  order  to  get  definite  military  results.  That  would 
mean  a  new  war  debt  of  something  like  forty  or  fifty 
billions  for  us  to  carry. 

Lieutenant-General  Kojiro  Sato  of  the  Japanese  army 
has  recently  written  for  the  "Hochi,"  a  Tokio  news 
paper,  articles  in  which  he  seriously  anticipates  the 
power  that  the  United  States  could  bring  to  bear  in  a 
possible  war  against  Japan. 

"I  do  not  think  that  America  can  summon  up  the  courage 
to  disregard  these  obstacles  and  think  of  sending  an  expedition 
to  a  country  so  far  removed  from  her  as  Japan.  .  .  . 

"When    America's    program    of    naval    extension    is    com- 


148  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

pleted,  she  will  have  40  old  and  new  battleships,  37  cruisers, 
258  torpedo-destroyers,  more  than  300  submarines,  and  5000 
seaplanes.  America's  army  will  be  300,000  strong  and  mean 
while  650,000  young  men  of  military  age  are  in  training  every 
year.  Looking  at  the  American  preparedness  as  indicated,  one 
is  apt  to  come  to  the  conclusion  that  Japan  is  no  match  for 
America  in  point  of  military  strength.  .  .  . 

"Although  the  Japanese  navy  is  inferior  to  the  American, 
America  would  find  it  an  impossibility  to  land  her  troops  in 
any  part  of  the  Japanese  territory  as  long  as  there  exists  the 
Japanese  Navy.  Even  if  America  possessed  the  greatest  navy 
in  the  world  she  would  not  think  of  conquering  Japan.  As 
long  as  there  remains  the  last  man  in  this  land  ready  to  lay 
down  his  life  for  his  country,  the  American  Navy,  however 
strong,  would  have  little  chance  of  possessing  any  part  of 
Japan." 

Lieutenant-General  Sato  has  omitted  many  steps  in  his 
wholly  sound  reasoning-.  Let  us  attempt  to  supply  them. 
We  shall  find  that  this  high  military  officer  and  expert 
has  politely  concealed  a  host  of  harsh  facts. 

To-day  the  American  battle  fleet  is  more  than  twice  as 
powerful  as  the  Japanese.  We  have  369  vessels  of  all 
classes  now  in  service  and  223  under  construction,  making 
a  total  of  592.  But  the  Japanese  have  four  battle  cruis 
ers  in  commission  and  four  more  under  way,  while  we 
have  none  at  all  ready  for  service,  but  are  building  six. 
As  these  are  the  most  potent  of  all  modern  types,  they 
must  be  reckoned  as  partly  outweighing  the  numerical 
advantage  of  our  huge  fleet  of  destroyers  and  submarines, 
which  constitute  more  than  one  third  of  our  navy. 

There  are,  however,  three  facts  of  prime  importance 
that  nullify  this  physical  superiority  of  our  fleet.  The 
first  is  our  great  distance  from  Japan  and  the  strategic 


WHAT  WOULD  WAR  INVOLVE?  149 

weakness  of  our  line  of  supply  between  San  Francisco 
and  Manila.  The  second  is  the  division  of  our  fleet  into 
two  parts,  which  are  more  than  five  thousand  miles  re 
moved  from  each  other,  one  in  the  Pacific  and  the  other 
in  the  Atlantic.  And  the  third  is  the  appalling  shortage 
of  trained  personnel  on  all  our  vessels,  which  is  so  grave 
that,  according  to  naval  authorities  who  were  interviewed 
by  the  Chicago  "Tribune"  recently,  it  would  consume  at 
least  a  year  to  make  the  fleet  fit  to  fight  even  if  it  were 
reunited  in  a  single  body  and  fully  officered  and  manned. 
This  opinion  has  been  subscribed  to  by  several  naval  of 
ficers  whom  I  consulted  at  San  Francisco  and  San  Diego. 
Some  of  them  asserted  that,  in  its  desperate  efforts  to 
keep  the  boats  intact,  the  recruiting  officers  were  now  re 
fraining  from  too  close  scrutiny  of  the  age  and  the  origin 
of  would-be  sailors,  with  the  result  that  fourteen-year-old 
boys  in  considerable  numbers  may  now  be  found  aboard 
our  battleships.  One  very  intelligent  quartermaster 
added  that  it  seemed  fairly  easy  to  secure  recruits  for 
the  Atlantic  fleet,  but  very  hard  to  hold  them  on  the 
Pacific  side,  where  desertions  were  frequent.  And  a 
lieutenant  at  San  Diego  said  that  the  boys  lately  re 
cruited  were  so  green  and  reckless  that  he  was  afraid 
to  turn  in  whenever  his  vessel  put  to  sea  for  manoeuvers. 
Our  experiences  in  the  Spanish- American  War  revealed 
the  peril  of  a  fleet  divided  between  the  Atlantic  and  Pa 
cific.  And  the  World  War  showed  beyond  dispute  the 
enormous  advantage  accruing  to  the  fleet  that  fights  a 
defensive  war  in  its  home  waters,  backed  up  by  shore 
batteries  and  hidden  behind  its  own  mines.  We  may,  in 
the  light  of  all  this,  assert  that,  even  if  our  fleet  were, 
on  paper,  four  times  as  powerful  as  Japan's,  it  probably 


150  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

would  not  vanquish  the  latter  in  Japanese  waters,  which 
could  be  converted  into  an  impassable  mine-field  in  less 
time  than  we  could  man  and  fit  and  unite  our  vessels 
and  build  up  a  safe  supply-line. 

To  grasp  the  difficulty  of  naval  operations  in  the  Far 
East  look  at  a  map  of  the  Western  Pacific  as  it  was  re 
drawn  by  the  Peace  Conference.  In  part  payment  for 
her  services  to  the  Allies,  Japan  has  been  put  in  posses 
sion  of  Germany's  islands  of  Micronesia,  north  of  the 
equator,  namely  the  Carolines,  the  Marshall  and  the 
Marian  groups.  The  Marshall  Islands  have  harbors  that 
easily  accommodate  the  largest  warships.  And  this  brute 
fact  of  Nature  neutralizes  the  clause  in  the  provisions 
laid  down  by  the  League  of  Nations  according  to  which 
Japan,  as  mandatory  over  these  islands,  is  forbidden  to 
fortify  them  or  use  them  as  a  naval  base.  Whenever 
Japan  wishes  to  use  them,  all  she  has  to  do  is  sail  in  and 
drop  anchor. 

Now,  these  islands  lie  between  the  United  States  and 
the  Philippines,  not  in  a  strict  geographical  sense,  to  be 
sure,  but  strategically.  An  American  ship  plying  be 
tween  Manila  and  San  Francisco  would,  in  war  time,  be 
exposed  to  attack  for  an  unbroken  stretch  of  a  full  thou 
sand  miles.  To  conceive  what  this  means,  let  any  Ameri 
can  soldier  or  sailor  who  crossed  the  North  Atlantic  dur 
ing  the  World  War  imagine  that  ocean  to  be  nearly 
double  its  present  width ;  then  let  there  be  strung  along 
the  last  thousand  miles  of  the  stretch  a  hundred  or  more 
islands,  south  of  the  steamers'  track;  and  finally  let  a 
hundred  or  more  German  battleships  and  submarines  and 
supply  boats  be  lurking  in  the  harbors  of  those  islands. 


WHAT  WOULD  WAR  INVOLVE?  151 

Nor  is  this  all.  Directly  north  of  the  Philippines  lies 
Formosa,  now  a  part  of  Japan.  Here  is  a  highly  devel 
oped  naval  base  from  which  a  battleship  fleet  can  steam 
to  Manila  in  considerably  less  than  forty-eight  hours. 
The  best  approach  to  Manila  from  the  United  States  is 
around  the  north  of  Luzon,  over  the  very  waters  of  the 
Formosa  naval  base  zone.  It  would  be  the  simplest 
thing  in  the  world  for  the  Japanese  to  mine  all  the  north 
erly  approaches  of  our  archipelago  weeks  before  our  fleet 
of  transports  arrived. 

The  British,  French,  and  Italian  navies  combined  were 
unable  to  hold  in  check  the  German  submarines,  when 
Germany  was  driven  off  the  high  seas.  What  could  the 
American  navy  do  in  overcoming  the  Japanese  subma 
rines,  when  the  whole  of  Japan  itself  is  on  the  high  seas 
and  its  outposts  scattered  so  widely?  Is  it  to  be  won 
dered  at  that  all  naval  experts  ivhahave  spoken  on  this 
matter  agree  that,  from  the  military  point  of  view  alone, 
the  United  States  could  not  prevent  Japan  from  conquer 
ing  the  Philippines  f 

Here  let  me  cite  the  highest  possible  authorities  in 
defense  of  the  position  I  have  taken.  On  January  15, 
1920,  the  Submarine  Defense  Association  published  a 
more  or  less  technical  report  on  the  record  of  subma 
rines  during  the  world  war.  This  society,  I  may  say,  is 
composed  chiefly  of  Navy  officers,  shipbuilders,  and 
other  men  professionally  engaged  in  naval  affairs.  They 
are  all  convinced  that  it  is  folly  to  go  on  building  battle 
ships.  Here  are  their  reasons: 

"The  war  was  won  on  land.  At  sea,  the  submarine  had 
proved  itself  potentially  supreme.  In  the  last  week  of  hostili- 


152  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

ties  the  Germans,  who  had  concentrated  on  tankers,  sank  nine. 
If  Germany  had  had  1,000  U-boats  in  August,  1914,  nothing 
could  have  saved  Britain  and  the  Allies. 

"As  it  was,  she  had  only  thirty-six  U-boats  at  first  and  usu 
ally  only  eight  or  nine  were  in  use  at  any  one  time.  On  the 
average,  each  U-boat  sunk  cost  the  Allies  $100,000,000  in  loss 
and  expenditure,  a  total  for  the  war  of  $20,000,000,000.  Civ 
ilization  cannot  stand  such  casualty.  In  years  to  come  sub 
marines  will  have  a  wider  range  of  activity.  When  small,  they 
will  be  hydroplanes  almost  able  to  fly.  When  large,  improved 
engines  will  enable  them  to  remain  submerged  for  indefinite 
periods.  Whatever  headway  was  made  against  submarines 
was  largely  because  they  had  to  rise  to  the  surface.  If  this 
necessity  be  reduced,  the  submarines  will  become  to  that  extent 
more  formidable.  In  four  and  one-half  years  of  intensive  ef 
fort,  with  at  least  600  destroyers  besides  other  naval  units, 
and  6,000  patrol  and  searching  vessels,  only  205  submarines 
were  sunk  or  captured.  In  the  Irish  Sea  alone  2,500  vessels 
were  on  patrol,  yet  they  could  not  guarantee  safety  when  the 
armistice  was  signed. 

"Building  big  battleships  is  sheer  waste  of  money.  Ten 
years  after  the  fight  between  the  Monitor  and  the  Merrimac 
navies  were  constructing  obsolete  ships,  and  so  will  it  be  with 
dreadnoughts.  No  great  army  can  be  carried  across  the  ocean 
against  a  fleet  of  submarines.  Against  attack,  Australia  and 
New  Zealand  are  absolutely  secure.  Given  enough  submarines, 
the  United  States  is  now  a  distinct  and  impregnable  military 
unit,  and  so  is  the  Old  World.  If  war  breaks  out  again,  it  will 
be  fought  on  land  behind  a  ring  fence.  In  my  judgment, 
the  United  States  and  Britain  should  face  the  facts  and  save 
their  money.  The  future  is  serious  enough  without  the  waste 
of  resources  on  useless  varieties  of  armaments." 

It  would  be  idle  to  add  a  word  to  this  tremendous 
demonstration  of  the  impregnability  of  any  and  all  coun- 


WHAT  WOULD  WAR  INVOLVE?  153 

tries  which  are  remote  and  have  some  submarine  de 
fenses.  It  is  worth  while,  though,  to  state  that  the  facts 
above  adduced  were  largely  responsible  for  the  remark 
able  change  of  policj-  in  Great  Britain  with  regard  to  the 
building  of  battleships. 

All  this  need  not  terrify  us  in  this  Japanese  crisis. 
For  happily,  the  converse  of  this  predicament  is  equally 
true.  Japan  could  not  wage  a  successful  war  with  the 
United  States  on  our  own  ground.  To  attack  the  Cali 
fornia  coast  with  the  idea  of  landing  and  holding  it  would 
require  fifty  times  as  many  men  and  fifty  times  as  much 
material  as  Japan  would  need  for  taking  all  Eastern  Si 
beria,  which  is  immeasurably  more  valuable  to  her  than 
our  whole  Pacific  coast. 

Shortly  after  the  armistice,  our  own  "War  Department 
authorized  the  publication  of  statements  by  our  War  Col 
lege  experts  which  all  drove  unmistakably  toward  this 
essential  conclusion.  They  criticized  the  previous  esti 
mates  of  forces  needed  by  Japan  for  effecting  a  landing 
in  California  and  there  carrying  on  offensive  warfare. 
Those  old  estimates,  which  had  been  paraded  for  years 
by  jingo  journalists  and  impish  imperialists,  set  the 
figure  at  something  like  half  a  million  men.  All  the 
technical  studies  of  the  World  War,  according  to  our  mil 
itary  specialists,  showed  that  that  figure  is  far  below  the 
mark.  In  view  of  our  immense  military  and  naval  ex 
pansion  since  1917,  all  thought  of  invasion  has  become 
imbecile.  Probably  the  five  strongest  foreign  powers 
acting  in  perfect  accord  could  not  successfully  assault  us 
to-day,  and  nobody  knows  this  better  than  the  Japanese 
military  leaders. 


CHAPTER  15 
THE  GREAT  DEADLOCK 

THE  greatest  piece  of  luck  that  could  befall  the  world 
would  be  to  have  the  militaristic  clique  of  Japan  be 
come  so  inflated  over  its  power  and  its  "  honor "  that  it 
declared  war  against  the  United  States,  seized  the  Philip 
pines  and  Hawaii,  and  made  a  demonstration  against  our 
Pacific  coast,  some  time  during  the  next  few  years. 
Such  a  move  could  have  only  one  outcome.  It  would 
sound  the  death-knell  of  Prussianism  in  Asia. 

It  would  instantly  shatter  the  British-Japanese  Alli 
ance;  for  Great  Britain  could  not  tolerate  the  Japanese 
in  the  Philippines,  as  that  would  mean  the  ruin  of  the 
British  naval  base  at  Hongkong  and  the  complete  blan 
keting  of  China,  whose  entire  coast  would  then  be  abso 
lutely  at  the  mercy  of  her  one  dangerous  enemy.  It 
would  also  mean  a  most  ominous  southward  extension  of 
Japanese  power  in  the  direction  of  Australia,  the  land 
most  coveted  of  all  by  the  Japanese.  But,  worst  of  all, 
the  British  Empire  would  be  confronted  with  the  painful 
necessity  of  choosing  between  her  Asiatic  ally  and  the  one 
non-British  nation  which  speaks  the  English  language 
and  is  destined,  by  geography,  by  climate,  and  by  natu 
ral  resources,  to  become  the  permanent  center  of  the 
white  man's  civilization.  No  American  and  no  English 
man  doubts  that  the  people  of  Great  Britain  would  hesi- 

154 


THE  GREAT  DEADLOCK  155 

tate  a  moment  in  casting  their  lot  unreservedly  with  the 
United  States,  cost  what  it  might. 

For  similar  reasons  Japanese  aggression  would  start 
uprisings  in  China  which  would  drive  every  merchant, 
trader,  and  hireling  of  Nippon  out  of  the  land.  Or,  fail 
ing  that,  they  would  compel  the  Mikado  to  place  a  huge 
army  in  China,  which  would  require  many  ships  for 
transportation  and  maintenance  of  supplies.  Japan 
would  not  be  able  to  maintain  for  long  a  war  in  China 
and  a  naval  war  against  the  two  mightiest  fleets  on  earth. 

There  is  the  further  possibility,  and  one  not  remote, 
that  the  Kussians  might  take  a  hand  in  the  contest  as  a 
matter  of  self-interest ;  and  even  a  slight  exertion  on  their 
part  would  count  heavily  against  the  Japanese.  The 
hatred  of  Japanese  imperialism  in  Russia  is  as  fierce  as 
it  is  in  China,  perhaps  even  fiercer,  in  view  of  the  gross 
seizures,  illegal  occupations,  and  repeated  brutalities  of 
the  Japanese  troops  in  Siberia,  which  were  so  bad  that 
even  our  State  Department  uttered  a  few  coherent  and 
verbally  powerful  peeps  of  protest  against  them,  while 
the  working-men's  unions  of  Eastern  Siberia  have  sent 
appeals  to  the  world  for  help  against  the  Huns  of  the 
East. 

Unfortunately,  however,  the  strategists  of  Tokio  know 
all  this,  and  much  more  accurately  than  anybody  else 
does.  This  is  why  acute  observers,  notably  the  Chinese, 
have  been  saying  openly  that  the  diplomatic  pressure  of 
the  Japanese  Foreign  Office  for  a  prompt  adjustment  of 
the  California  crisis  can  lead  nowhere.  It  is,  they  de 
clare,  merely  a  move  to  "save  the  face"  of  the  Govern 
ment,  just  as  our  own  State  Department 's  protest  against 
the  Japanese  occupation  of  Sakhalin  was.  Every  gov- 


156  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

eminent  is  committed  to  certain  policies  which  cannot  be 
maintained  in  practice.  Each  finds  it  more  comfortable 
to  go  on  talking  as  if  talk  could  be  backed  up  with  deeds. 
It  saves  one  the  trouble  of  working  out  a  new  policy. 

It  is  this  extraordinary  military  deadlock  that  explains 
a  number  of  things  which  have  mystified  editors  and  stu 
dents  of  Oriental  affairs.  It  explains  the  pronounced 
forbearance  of  the  Japanese  Government  in  the  face  of 
the  harsh  discriminatory  land  law  just  approved  by  the 
California  referendum.  It  explains  the  marked  restraint 
that  same  Government  has  maintained  in  the  presence 
of  local  boycotts  against  Japanese  farmers  and  store 
keepers  here  and  there  in  California  and  the  occasional 
expulsion  of  Japanese  settlers  from  a  few  rural  districts, 
usually  under  the  leadership  of  the  local  American  Le 
gion.  Up  to  the  date  of  this  present  writing  (January 
10,  1921)  the  Japanese  Government  has  exerted  itself 
scrupulously  to  hold  in  check  the  anti-American  demon 
strations  that  have  been  breaking  out  in  Tokio  and  else 
where,  and  it  has  confined  its  own  official  efforts  to  filing 
polite  protestations  with  our  State  Department  and  ask 
ing  that  ' '  something  be  done  about  it. ' '  We  are  still  in 
the  stage  of  diplomatic  amenities. 

This  is  not  at  all  after  the  manner  of  that  same  Japan 
which  made  ruinous  demands  of  China  only  a  few  years 
ago  and  less  than  six  months  ago  defended  its  "honor" 
valiantly  at  Nikolaievsk,  of  which  more  later.  But  even 
more  puzzling  is  the  Japanese  Government's  determina 
tion  to  keep  secret  the  new  arrangements  which  it  must 
make  with  us  over  the  California  crisis.  In  this  latest 
situation  we  find  the  clearest  proof  of  the  almost  ludi- 


THE  GREAT  DEADLOCK  157 

crous  predicament  of  both  the  Japanese  and  the  Ameri 
can  militarists.     We  must  inspect  it  closely. 

Since  the  November  elections,  Baron  Shidehara,  Japa 
nese  ambassador  to  the  United  States,  has  been  conferring 
with  our  State  Department  over  a  revision  of  the  old 
"Gentlemen's  Agreement"  that  was  drawn  up  by  Root 
and  Takahira.  What  the  new  agreement  will  be  nobody 
is  to  know,  unless  matters  reach  a  fresh  crisis.  Among 
diplomatic  circles  in  Washington  it  is  pretty  generally 
believed  that  our  State  Department  will  make  public 
little  or  nothing  about  the  terms  of  the  readjustment. 
As  the  correspondent  of  the  New  York  " Times"  puts  it: 

"The  impression  prevails  here  (in  Washington)  that  the 
terms  of  the  gentlemen's  agreement  will  not  be  disclosed  unless 
at  some  time  in  the  future  this  Government  believes  they  have 
been  violated.  How  this  secret  understanding  will  accord  with 
the  principle  laid  down  in  the  covenant  of  the  League  of  Na 
tions  of  removing  the  veil  of  secrecy  from  all  concluded  ar 
rangements  between  governments  is  not  explained,  but  the  un 
derstanding  is  that  out  of  a  delicate  sense  of  consideration  for 
the  sensibilities  of  Japan  there  will  be  no  publicity" 

Now  all  this  piques  the  curiosity  of  a  political  realist. 
What,  to  be  quite  precise,  is  the  "delicate  sense  of  con 
sideration"  which  our  own  State  Department  possesses? 
Nobody  noticed  it  when  the  State  Department  was  deal 
ing  with  Haiti  recently.  Nobody  noticed  it  in  the  State 
Department's  singular  callousness  toward  China  and  its 
recent  weakness  in  maintaining  the  traditional  American 
policy  in  Siberia  when  the  Japanese  took  over  the  north 
ern  half  of  Sakhalin.  Nor  has  anybody  noticed  it  in 
the  various  moves  of  the  State  Department  in  Mexico. 


158  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

How  does  it  happen  that  Japan  should  be  the  only  nation 
in  the  world  toward  which  our  statesmen  display  lady 
like  manners?  It  cannot  be  accident.  It  must  be  de 
sign.  Particularly  so  when  we  take  into  consideration 
that  the  great  original  foe  of  secret  diplomacy  and  cham 
pion  of  "open  covenants  openly  arrived  at"  happens  to 
be  the  President  of  the  United  States.  Particularly  so, 
we  may  add,  when  we  also  take  into  consideration  the 
fact,  challenged  by  nobody,  that  the  Japanese  Govern 
ment  is  a  stern  political  realist  and  has  never  been  known 
to  display  delicate  consideration  toward  Korea,  Siberia, 
China,  or  anybody  else  save  the  United  States.  Consider, 
as  one  of  a  hundred  equally  striking  instances,  the  Niko- 
laievsk  affair.  This  illustrates  both  the  political  realism 
of  Japan  and  the  "delicate  sense  of  consideration"  which 
the  Japanese  Government  displayed  toward  our  own 
State  Department. 

In  the  obscure  Russian  town  of  Nikolaievsk  ill  feeling 
developed  between  the  inhabitants  and  a  Japanese  garri 
son  which  had  been  stationed  there  under  the  pretext  of 
keeping  order  and  guarding  against  the  eastward  march 
of  the  wicked,  wicked  Bolsheviki.  Some  assert  that  the 
ill  feeling  was  deliberately  nursed  by  the  Japanese ;  oth 
ers  deny  this.  But  the  point  is  of  trifling  importance. 
Rowdyism,  then  street  fighting,  began.  Soldiers  came  in 
and  opened  fire.  When  it  was  all  over,  some  six  hundred 
soldiers  and  civilians  lay  dead.  Whereupon  Japan 
poured  in  troops,  and  within  two  months  had  officially 
announced  the  taking  over  of  the  northern  half  of  Sak 
halin  in  order  to  uphold  the  honor  and  prestige  of  the 
empire  whose  brave  soldiers  had  been  ruthlessly  slain 
by  the  Nikolaievskians. 


THE  GREAT  DEADLOCK  159 

Commenting  upon  this  happy  outcome,  General  Sato, 
of  the  Japanese  General  Staff,  said : 

"But  I  should  like  them  (the  civil  officials)  to  remember  how 
precious  human  blood  is.  The  blood  of  only  two  men  secured 
the  lease  of  Kiaochau  and  the  blood  of  only  thirty-seven  men 
was  enough  to  give  Britain  the  ascendency  in  Shanghai.  We 
do  not  mean  to  make  the  most  of  the  blood  of  600  people  who 
came  to  a  miserable  end  at  Nikolaievsk,  but  something  must  be 
done  that  the  spirits  of  those  victims  may  go  to  rest." 

This  mild  glossing  over  of  imperialistic  plans  by  a 
reference  of  piety  is  unworthy  of  a  general,  who  should 
be  a  complete  realist.  Straight  to  the  point  and  with 
complete  and  admirable  honesty  drives  a  great  Japanese 
daily  paper,  the  "Yorodzu."  It  declares: 

'TVfany  of  our  countrymen  are  always  fearful  of  what  other 
powers  may  say.  .  .  .  Britain  is  now  so  fully  occupied  with 
Irish  and  Central  Eastern  problems  that  she  can  scarcely  turn 
her  attention  elsewhere.  America  is  engrossed  in  the  Presi 
dential  election  and  the  Mexican  problem.  .  .  .  Britain,  which 
already  owns  the  greater  part  of  the  world,  is  enlarging  her 
territory  more  and  more,  and  America  is  endeavoring  to  place 
under  her  administration  Mexico.  ...  It  is  at  this  juncture 
that  the  great  massacre  at  Nicolaievsk  has  taken  place.  .  .  . 
Unless  Japan  takes  action,  it  is  to  be  feared  that  there  is  no 
hope  for  economic  existence.  No  nation  has  ever  failed  to  take 
important  action  in  the  face  of  a  serious  massacre." 

How  clearly  the  editor  saw  the  world  situation !  And 
how  events  confirmed  him!  Our  Department  of  State 
sent  a  hasty  note  to  the  Japanese  Government  about  the 
occupation  of  Sakhalin.  This  move,  said  we  officially, 
was  contrary  to  our  wishes.  We  wished  Japan  would  re- 


160  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

spect  these  wishes  and  withdraw.  To  which  Japan  re 
plied,  with  all  the  graciousness  of  diplomacy,  that  it  had 
the  highest  regard  for  our  wishes  and  hoped  to  go  hand 
in  hand  with  us  down  the  corridors  of  time,  but  none 
the  less  it  was  going  to  stay  in  Sakhalin.  To  this  we 
made  no  official  reply.  But  on  September  16  following, 
our  State  Department  said  that  Japan  had  construed  our 
silence  as  consent. 

Of  course  our  own  Republican  politicians  were  on  hand 
with  their  own  interpretation  of  this  rebuff.  It  was  plain, 
they  said,  that  Wilson  was  playing  into  the  hands  of  the 
Japanese.  Listen  to  the  burning  words  of  George  W. 
Hinman,  a  well-known  Chicago  newspaper  man,  who  was 
editor-in-chief  of  the  Republican  campaign  of  1920.  On 
September  13,  at  a  luncheon  given  by  the  Republican 
National  Committee  in  Chicago,  he  said : 

"The  Wilson  administration  has  built  up  Japan  to  be  the 
greatest  power  in  the  Far  East. 

"This  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that  Jefferson  pointed  the  way 
to  a  very  different  national  policy  as  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  which 
was  followed  consistently  down  through  a  long  line  of  his  suc 
cessors  until  the  present  day.  .  .  . 

"We  have  seen  the  'gentlemen's  agreement'  broken  and  the 
'open  door'  closed. 

"They  went  overseas  and  gave  to  Japan  islands  in  the  Pa 
cific  which  brought  that  empire  2,000  miles  closer  to  the  Pan 
ama  Canal. 

"They  have  given  away  to  Japan  the  peninsula  of  Shantung, 
with  its  46,000,000  of  Chinese,  the  most  disgraceful — the  only 
disgraceful  thing  in  our  diplomatic  history.  The  Wilson  ad 
ministration  has  yielded  everything  to  Japan  from  the  day  of 
Secretary  of  State  Bryan  down." 


THE  GREAT  DEADLOCK  161 

It  is  quite  possible  that  Mr.  Hinman  believes  half  of 
what  he  here  says.  But  the  editor  of  the  "Yorodzu" 
believes  less  of  it.  Nor  can  any  other  human  being  ex 
cept  a  politician  accept  more  than  the  closing  statement, 
which  is  plausible,  but  hardly  true,  for  by  the  terms  of 
the  treaty,  what  is  given  to  Japan  is  the  Bay  of  Kiaochau 
and  the  town  of  Tsing-tao  on  its  shores  with  certain  eco 
nomic  privileges  in  Shantung.  True  enough,  the  Wilson 
administration  has  yielded  everything  to  Japan;  but  so 
would  any  other  administration.  So  will  the  next  Re 
publican  administration  in  so  far  as  Asiatic  issues  are 
concerned.  And  for  the  best  of  all  reasons. 

So  surely  as  Japan  cannot  back  up  her  wishes  on  this 
side  of  the  Pacific  with  force,  just  so  surely  can  the 
United  States  make  no  similar  move  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Pacific.  Japan  knows  the  futility  of  landing  troops 
in  California.  Our  War  and  Navy  Departments  know 
the  futility  of  landing  troops  in  Sakhalin,  to  oust  the 
Japanese  from  Russia.  Here  we  come  upon  the  one  sim 
ple  explanation  of  the  lamentable  breakdown  of  our  once 
glorious  "open-door"  policy  in  China;  our  shrewd  inac 
tion  with  regard  to  Japan's  irresistible  invasion  and  ab 
sorption  of  Korea,  whose  last  death-throes  we  are  now 
hearing;  our  failure  to  back  up  the  Chinese  Delegation 
at  the  peace  conference  in  the  face  of  outrageous  demands 
pushed  and  achieved  by  the  astute  Elder  Statesmen ;  and 
our  recent  pointless  letter-writing  about  our  Asiatic  pol 
icy,  so  suavely  ignored  and  later  misinterpreted  by  Tokio. 
Here,  too,  we  have  an  equally  complete  and  rational  ex 
planation  of  Japan 's  headlong  conquests  on  the  mainland 
of  Asia,  her  ruthless  demands  upon  China  during  the 


162  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

•  "World  War,  and  then  her  genteel  paper  protests  to  Wash 
ington  against  the  California  land  law,  followed  by  her 
efforts  to  keep  all  negotiations  and  the  new  "Gentle- 

[  men's  Agreement "  secret. 

It  must  now  be  pretty  plain  what  that  ''delicate  sense 
of  consideration ' '  is  which  our  State  Department  is  dis 
playing  toward  Japan  in  the  revision  of  the  "Gentle 
men's  Agreement."  The  Japanese  Government  has  for 
the  last  ten  years  been  working  day  and  night  to  gain 
full  recognition  as  a  world  power.  Its  military  and 
naval  expansion  has  been  a  part  of  this  effort.  So,  too, 
has  been  its  insistence,  sometimes  almost  childish,  upon 
its  own  "national  honor,"  concerning  which  it  has 
plainly  taken  its  cue  from  the  old  German  militarists  and 
their  imitators  in  other  lands.  This  has  made  an  im 
pression  upon  the  Japanese  people  much  deeper  than  it 
could  upon  any  Western  European  stock.  They  are  po 
litically  immature,  precisely  as  the  German  people  were, 
only  more  so.  They  lean  heavily  upon  their  ruling 
classes,  as  we  have  seen.  They  believe  the  mikado  to  be 
God's  agent,  all-wise  and  all-powerful.  Now,  the  army 
and  navy  still  dominate  in  the  Government,  and  their 
backers  in  the  newspapers  are  powerful  and  noisy.  Fur 
thermore  there  is  the  tremendous  need  of  an  outlet  for 
Japan 's  overcrowded  millions,  and  the  most  natural  thing 
in  the  world  is  to  expect  the  Government  to  find  that  out 
let.  The  Government  has  been  trying  to  find  it,  in  Korea, 
in  Formosa,  in  China,  in  Siberia,  in  Mexico,  in  California, 
and  even  in  South  America  and  Australia.  And  it  has 
been  quite  consistent  for  the  Government  to  insist  strictly 
upon  the  rights  of  its  nationals  to  go  wherever  the  citizens 
of  other  countries  go.  Only  the  narrowest  slave  of  race 


THE  GREAT  DEADLOCK  163 

prejudice  can  find  fault  with  this  attitude ;  certainly  any 
other  attitude  would  be  humiliating  and  injurious  to  him 
who  took  it.  Nevertheless,  it  cannot  be  maintained  either 
by  argument  or  by  force  in  the  case  of  California.  This 
State  has  a  perfect  right  constitutionally  to  pass  any  land 
law  it  sees  fit  to,  and  our  State  Department  cannot  inter 
fere  with  power.  At  most  it  can  beseech  California  not 
to  put  thorns  in  the  way  of  diplomats,  and  the  Japanese 
diplomats  are  well  aware  of  this  fact.  They  know  that 
they  cannot  politely  threaten  war.  They  know  that  such 
a  threat  would  only  provoke  a  polite  smile  from  our  own 
State  Department.  For,  although  our  State  Department 
is  not  a  marvel  of  intelligence,  it  does  know  that  Japan 
has  scarcely  a  better  chance  of  forcing  our  hand  with  a 
show  of  troops  and  battle-ships  than  Montenegro  has, 
and  for  the  reasons  we  have  set  forth  above. 

The  plain  truth  is  that  the  Japanese  Government  is  ^ 
in  a  most  painful  dilemma.  If  it  stands  consistently  < 
upon  its  avowed  rights  and  its  resolve  to  win  the  full 
rights  of  emigration  and  citizenship  which  it  has  repeat 
edly  assured  its  own  people  it  would  do,  it  will  inevitably 
expose  its  own  incompetence  to  secure  those  rights ;  and 
such  an  exposure  would  certainly  precipitate  a  grave 
political  crisis  in  Japan.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  ac 
cepts  the  fact  that  it  cannot  force  the  hand  of  California, 
still  less  of  the  United  States,  not  even  by  military  ag 
gression,  it  will  then  consistently  acquiesce  in  discrimi 
natory  legislation  against  its  subjects  on  our  Pacific 
coast ;  and  this  will  infuriate  the  ardent  nationalists  and 
the  jingoes  of  Japan  and  perhaps  lead  to  the  overthrow 
of  the  present  Government.  Its  one  easy  way  out  is  to 
conceal  this  dilemma  from  its  own  people.  And,  as  luck 


164-  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

will  have  it,  our  own  State  Department  can  readily  be 
persuaded  to  do  its  share  in  this  covenant  of  silence ;  for 
it  finds  itself  in  precisely  the  same  sort  of  a  dilemma  with 
regard  to  its  Asiatic  policy.  Our  old  and  beloved  ' '  open- 
door"  policy  in  China  and  our  hazy  fervor  for  self-de 
termination  (except  in  those  cases  where  we  want  to  do 
somebody's  determining  for  him,  as  in  Mexico  and  Haiti) 
have  both  become,  so  far  as  Asia  is  concerned,  idle  rhet 
oric,  and  for  the  best  of  all  reasons,  namely,  our  phy 
sical  inability  to  practice  what  we  preach.  Our  foreign 
trade  interests  are  eager  to  see  the  "open-door"  policy 
maintained  in  China,  and  powerful  financial  interests 
are  equally  anxious  to  have  a  door  now  closed  pried  open 
— the  door  to  Siberia. 

The  two  greatest  opportunities  of  fortune  left  in  the 

fw 

whoje  world  to-day  are  found  in  the  industrializing  of 
China  and  the  exploitation  of  the  natural  resources  of 
Siberia.  Japan  has  a  little  free  capital  and  a  prodigious 
labor  supply  with  which  to  grasp  these  two  opportunities. 
The  United  States  has  a  deluge  of  dollars  ready  to  pour 
into  both  countries  the  minute  it  can  feel  safe  in  doing  so. 
,  No  third  nation  on  earth  ranks  with  either  Japan  or  our 
selves  in  inclination  or  ability  to  grow  rich  in  those  vast 
regions.  The  hunger  of  our  own  foreign  investors  has 
been  comically  exhibited  of  late  by  three  more  or  less 
related  -events:  the  reorganization  of  the  China  con 
sortium,  under  the  lead  of  Mr.  Thomas  W.  Lament,  of 
J.  P.  Morgan  &  Co.,  and  its  offer  of  loans  to  the  Chinese 
Government  before  the  latter  had  expressed  any  desire 
of  borrowing ;  the  strange  adventures  of  one  W.  D.  Van- 
derlip,  representing  a  group  of  prominent  California 
capitalists,  in  getting  from  the  soviet  government  a 


THE  GREAT  DEADLOCK  165 

sixty-year  lease  on  no  fewer  than  400,000  square  miles  of 
northeastern  Siberia,  and  an  unbelievable  contract  to 
deliver  American  manufactured  goods  to  Lenine  and 
Trotzky  in  exchange  for  minerals,  furs,  grain  and  tim 
ber;  and  the  noble  fury  which  is  being  vented  upon  this 
magnificent  commercial  adventurer  by  the  American  ex 
ploiters  who  have  cast  their  lot  with  the  French  and  are 
hoping  to  gain  these  very  same  leases  and  contracts  some 
fine  day  after  the  Bolsheviki  have  been  overthrown  and 
the  old  reactionaries  backed  by  France  have  returned  to 
power. 

.  However  hotly  these  various  American  groups  may 
hate  one  another,  they  are  of  one  mind  when  it  comes  to 
pressing  our  State  Department  to  clear  the  path  for  them 
in  Asia.  And  the  politest  way  of  accomplishing  this 
would  be  through  an  appeal  to  the  "open-door"  policy 
and  the  inviolable  sovereignty  of  Siberia.  But  our  un 
fortunate  State  Department  knows  only  too  poignantly 
that  it  is  powerless  to  force  Japan  out  of  Siberia  or  Shan 
tung.  And  the  Japanese  know  it,  too.  Were  the  United 
States  to  make  even  a  faint  gesture  of  force  in  its  nego 
tiations  over  Japan's  Asiatic  program,  it  would  instantly 
consolidate  the  entire  Japanese  citizenry  behind  the  mili 
tarists.  It  would  confirm  all  the  wildest  allegations  of 
the  Japanese  jingoes  about  our  crass  imperialism  and 
our  resolve  to  ruin  Japan  and  starve  her  people  for  the 
sake  of  American  capitalists.  It  would  set  back  liberal 
ism  in  Japan  a  whole  generation  and  would  speed  up  the 
expansion  of  the  empire  on  the  continent.  The  effect  in 
America  would  probably  be  quite  as  disconcerting,  for  it 
is  hard  to  doubt  that  the  temper  of  our  own  people  is 
fiercely  set  against  foreign  quarrels  of  the  magnitude  that 


166  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

leads  to  more  Liberty  loans,  more  Red  Cross  drives,  more 
conscription,  more  excess  profits  taxes,  more  Government 
management,  and  more  press  censorship.  A  statesman 
who  entered  upon  a  program  of  intimidation,  be  it  of 
Japan  or  any  other  nation,  which  promised  to  lead  in 
the  direction  of  another  war  and  billions  more  of  debt, 
would  be  promptly  exterminated,  politically  if  not  other 
wise.  Our  State  Department  knows  this,  and  so,  too, 
does  the  Japanese  Government. 


CHAPTER  16 
HOW  LONG  CAN  THE  DEADLOCK  CONTINUE? 

NOBODY  who  has  watched  international  events  dur 
ing  the  past  years  can  believe  that  the  deadlock 
which  we  have  just  been  describing-  can  continue  indefi 
nitely.  There  are  too  many  potent  forces  at  work  to 
break  it  down,  and,  even  if  there  were  not,  the  shifting  of 
populations,  business,  and  world  finance  would  certainly 
bring  about  the  same  result  by  mere  chance  sooner  or 
later.  Some  of  these  forces,  human  and  physical,  are 
already  conspicuous  enough,  and  we  must  consider  them 
at  once  if  for  no  other  purpose  than  to  forestall  a  possible 
misunderstanding  of  our  previous  remarks.  The  reader 
may  slip  into  the  optimistic  mood  as  he  notes  the  present 
obstacles  to  war.  He  may  suppose  that  no  war  between 
Japan  and  the  United  States  can  ever  develop. 

We  should  like  to  share  this  pleasant  conviction,  but 
nothing  that  has  been  said  above  warrants  such  a  fine 
faith.  It  must  be  emphasized  that  the  situation  in  the 
winter  of  1920-21  makes  war  within  the  next  few  years 
virtually  impossible  between  the  two  countries,  but  that 
the  conditions  which  are  responsible  for  this  deadlock  are 
decidedly  volatile.  Some  morning  we  may  awake  to  find 
them  gone  into  thin  air. 

As  I  have  already  said,  events  ane  shifting  like  ripples 
in  a  river,  and  no  man  can  pretend  to  foresee  more  than 

167 


168  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

a  few  general  tendencies  in  the  whole  situation.  Who, 
for  instance,  had  the  remotest  anticipation,  in  November, 
1920,  that  Baron  Hayashi  might  be  slightly  mistaken 
when  he  declared  perhaps  within  ten  or  twenty  years 
China  might  win  a  place  in  the  Council  of  the  League  of 
Nations  and  there  rank  with  Japan?  Outwardly  there 
was  every  indication  that  the  Japanese  representative  at 
Geneva  was  correct.  And  yet,  in  less  than  thirty  days 
after  his  utterance,  Wellington  Koo  had  committed  the 
Assembly  to  the  policy  of  choosing  one  non-permanent 
member  of  the  Council  from  a  state  outside  of  Europe 
and  the  Americas.  Within  a  week  after  this  skilful 
manoeuvre,  this  young  Chinese  statesman  had  won  votes 
enough  to  put  his  country  on  the  Council.  The  signifi 
cance  of  this  victory  lies  in  the  fact  that  a  unanimous 
vote  is  required  for  all  measures  in  Council.  Thus  it  has 
become  impossible,  at  least  during  the  next  year,  for 
Japan  to  commit  the  League  to  any  policy  which  China 
regards  as  injurious  to  her  own  interests. 

Now,  nobody  knows  what  reactions  this  may  set  up  in 
Japan.  But  we  may  reasonably  guess  that  both  the  bu 
reaucrats  and  the  militarists  are  thoroughly  aroused  over 
it.  They  see  many  of  their  well  laid  plans  for  the  peace 
ful  penetration  of  China  halted,  if  not  wrecked.  And,  to 
make  matters  worse,  in  the  very  same  week  they  see  the 
United  States  protesting  with  full  force  against  the 
League  of  Nations  turning  over  to  Japan  the  German 
cable  station  on  the  island  of  Yap  in  the  Pacific.  This 
protest  has  raised  squarely  the  issue  as  to  whether  the 
League  or  powerful  outsiders  are  going  to  shape  world 
policy  hereafter.  And  one  may  well  believe  that,  if  the 
League  loses  in  this  dispute,  the  Japanese  bureaucrats 


THE  DEADLOCK  169 

and  militarists  may  strive  to  follow  the  lead  of  Argentine 
and  drop  out  of  an  enterprise  which  offers  them  scant 
hope  of  profit. 

Episodes  like  these  two  may  conceivably  tempt  the 
ruling  classes  in  Japan  to  imitate  the  Prussian  war  party 
and  take  its  chances  on  a  "now  or  never"  policy.  In 
1914  the  Prussian  clique  saw  its  power  slipping  from  it. 
The  rising  power  of  the  Socialists  at  home  and  the  eco 
nomic  and  social  advance  of  France  and  England  prom 
ised  to  end,  within  a  few  more  years,  the  old  Prussian 
dominance  of  Continental  affairs.  Delay  meant  certain 
ruin.  The  desperate  stroke  offered  at  least  a  fighfing 
chance  of  victory.  They  took  the  chance.  And,  as  every 
close  student  of  diplomacy  and  military  technique  knows 
to-day,  they  lost  merely  because  of  a  few  serious  miscal 
culations  in  social  psychology.  If  some  powerful  Japa 
nese  militarists  can  convince  their  associates  that  they 
can  avoid  such  blunders,  it  might  happen  that  a  '  *  now  or 
never"  war  might  break  out  in  Eastern  Asia  on  a  mo 
ment's  notice. 

Immense  forces  of  money  and  public  sentiment  thwart 
such  a  mad  program  and  reduce  it  to  little  more  than  a 
bare  possibility,  so-  far  as  the  next  few  years  are  con 
cerned.  But  the  aspect  changes  profoundly  when  we 
look  further  into  the  future.  There,  so  far  as  we  can 
now  observe,  the  situation  is  reversed.  Immense  forces 
of  money  and  public  sentiment  may  then  encourage 
Japan  in  the  ways  of  aggressive  militarism.  To  cite 
again  only  the  two  chief  factors,  Japan's  economic  de 
pendence  upon  the  United  States,  especially  as  to  cotton 
and  iron,  and  the  anti-militaristic  sentiment  in  the 
United  States.  Each  of  these  restraining  influences  may 


170  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

fade  away  in  five  or  ten  years.     To  show  that  this  is  not 
a  mere  fear,  look  at  a  few  facts. 

Every  politician  and  business  man  in  Japan  is  painfully 
alive  to  that  country 's  commercial  and  military  weakness 
in  raw  materials;  and  public  opinion,  so  far  as  there  is 
any,  backs  up  every  official  move  that  looks  forward  to 
making  Japan  self-sufficient.  This  is  the  strongest  sin 
gle  power  behind  the  almost  feverish  development  of  the 
agricultural  and  mineral  resources  of  Korea  and  Man 
churia.  This  is  the  motive  dominant  in  Japanese  capi 
talists7  highly  successful  extension  into  the  coal  and  iron 
districts  of  China.  Developments  already  under  way  on 

1  the  continent  of  Asia  may  be  expected  to  emancipate 
Japan  from  both  the  British  and  the  American  coal  and 
iron  trade  within  a  decade,  especially  if  the  Japanese 
are  aided  ~by  immense  blocks  of  American  capital  in 
developing  the  natural  resources  and  the  railroads  of 
China. 

So  too,  somewhat  later,  with  the  development  of  cotton 
in  Korea  and  China.  The  former  country,  while  poorly 

.suited  to  extensive  cotton-growing,  can  be  made  to  help 
out.  The  agricultural  experts  state  that  native  cotton, 
while  quite  poor,  is  none  the  less  better  than  all  other 
grades  of  Oriental  fiber  and  is  in  good  demand  for  the 
manufacture  of  wadding  (used  largely  in  winter  cloth 
ing).  The  experiment  station  at  Mokpo  has  for  years 
been  testing  out  an  American  upland  cotton  and  finds 
that  it  thrives  fairly  well  in  the  southern  extremity  of 
the  peninsula,  where  both  the  acreage  planted  and  the 
yield  have  been  increasing  rapidly,  the  market  gross 
value  having  crossed  $2,000,000.  As  for  China,  she  sent 
in  1919  no  less  than  $38,249,886  worth  of  cotton  to  Japan, 


THE  DEADLOCK  171 

all  low  grade  fiber,  to  be  sure,  and  yet  significant  as  a 
promise  of  what  may  be  accomplished  once  railways  and 
money  spread  southward  in  that  mighty  empire.  It  is 
generally  held  that  China's  potential  cotton  yield  can  vie 
with  India's;  and  if  this  is  correct,  we  may  be  sure  that 
the  Japanese  textile  industry  will  neglect  nothing  that 
speeds  the  day  when,  if  need  be,  Japan  can  leave  both 
America  and  India  out  of  the  reckoning  in  placing  her 
cotton  orders.  It  is  not  to  be  expected,  of  course,  that 
China  will  ever  produce  high  quality  cotton  comparable 
to  even  our*  own  Southern  middlings ;  on  the  other  hand, 
such  a  quality  is  not  absolutely  necessary  for  the  Oriental 
trade,  which  is  geared  to  very  inferior  textiles  and 
padded  clothes.  Still  less  is  high-grade  cotton  needed 
for  war  purposes.  In  the  manufacture  of  explosives  the 
poorest  short  staple  is  precisely  as  good  as  the  finest  long 
staple.  So  far,  therefore,  as  military  eventualities  are 
concerned,  China  might  deliver  her  worst  enemy  from 
foreign  cotton  monopolies  by  increasing  her  own  yield 
fivefold  or  sixfold.  And  within  a  decade,  given  the  cap 
ital,  she  can  go  far  toward  that  goal. 

"We  ought  not  to  overlook  the  possibility  that  Siberia 
may  before  long  contribute  not  a  little  to  the  economic 
independence  of  Japan  from  India  and  America  by  a 
revival  of  her  limitless  wool  business.  Wool  is  little 
used  in  the  Orient  for  clothing,  chiefly  because  of  its 
relatively  high  cost.  But  in  the  event  of  war,  cost  is 
the  last  of  all  things  to  be.  taken  into  account.  The  one 
thing  that  counts  is  the  existence"  of  the  desired  goods 
and  the  ability  to  deliver  them  where  they  are  wanted 
in  time.  Thus  viewed,  Siberian  wool  would  certainly 
be  drawn  upon  heavily  by  Japan  at  a  pinch.  And  it 


172  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

would  greatly  reduce  the  amount  of  cotton  to  be  im 
ported. 

Here  is  not  the  place  for  an  exhaustive  analysis  of  ways 
and  means  whereby  Japan  may  free  herself  from  our 
double  control  of  her  raw  materials.  We  can  say,  how 
ever,  that  such  an  analysis  would  warrant- the  statement 
that  as  soon  as  Chinese  railroads  and  mines  and  similar 
enterprises  are  even  moderately  financed,  Japan  will  no 
longer  have  to  deal  with  us  in  coal,  iron  and  cotton.  She 
may  prefer  to  in  times  of  peace,  but  if  peace  ends  of  a 
sudden,  she  can  dispense  with  us.  And  that  date  may 
prove  to  be  as  early  as  1930.  It  is  hardly  conceivable 
that  the  vast  financial  plans  of  the  new  China  consortium 
will  be  long  delayed,  nor  that  their  execution  will  fail  to 
benefit  Japan  first  of  all  in  the  manner  mentioned. 
f  So,  speaking  not  at  all  in  prophecy,  but  simply  by  way 
'  of  showing  the  clear  direction  of  the  strongest  forces  now 
1  at  work  in  the  Orient,  we  may  conclude  that  in  ten  years 
or  thereabouts  the  Japanese  people  will  have  partly 
broken  the  deadlock  which  now  makes  it  impossible  for 
them  to  wage  war  upon  us. 

And  how  about  the  change  in  anti-war  sentiment  in 
America  during  this  same  crucial  decade?  Here  all 
speculation  is  idle.  Public  opinion  is  a  tricky  and  evas 
ive  creature  in  any  democracy,  so  many  and  so  subtle  are 
the  forces  that  drive  it  hither  and  yon.  The  safest  con 
jecture  is  a  very  timid  one ;  we  may  suppose,  at  the  very 
least,  that  the  usual  aftermath  of  a  great  war  will  tend 
to  recur  between  now  and  1930;  namely,  a  slow  forget- 
fulness  of  the  horrors  of  war  and  their  unprofitableness 
and  a  steady  tendency  to  gild  the  past,  to  draw  in  mem 
ory  a  picture  of  those  terribly  glorious  days,  and  to  thrill 


THE  DEADLOCK  173 

When  the  Fourth  of  July  orator  vocalizes  over  Chateau- 
Thierry.  Add  to  this  the  very  real  prospect  of  stupen 
dous  commercial  and  financial  expansion  of  American  in 
terests  in  both  China  and  the  Philippines,  as  well  as  in 
Siberia,  before  1930,  and  you  will  doubtless  be  inclined 
to  admit  that  the  perils  of  a  severe  clash  between  Japan 
and  ourselves  will  grow  rather  than  dwindle. 

Few  of  us  as  yet  comprehend  the  unparalleled! 
magnitude  and  power  of  the  organized  capital  in  our 
country  which  is  seeking  investment  in  China  and  Si 
beria.  Few  of  us  even  know  that  since,  the  armistice 
Americans  have  loaned  no  less  than  $8,000,000,000  to 
Europe,  much  of  it  on  terms  which,  according  to  the 
best  opinion,  make  mere  " brokers*  commissions"  look 
petty.  They  wish  no  better  luck  than,  to  make  an  equal 
loan  to  China  and  Siberia  during  the  next  few  decades, 
for  they  know  that  the  probable  profits  in  those  money- 
poor,  earth-rich  empires  must  be.  dazzling,  even  as  our 
most  conservative  bankers,  notably  Mr.  Thomas  W.  La- 
mont,  have  declared  them*to  be.  Now,  it  stands  to  reason 
that  you  cannot  send  thousands  of  American  engineers 
and  salesmen  and  bankers  into  the  same  rich  region  into 
which  thousands  of  Japanese'  engineers  and  salesmen  and 
bankers  are  pouring,  all  for  the  same  good  reason,  with 
out  multiplying  the  sources  of  conflict,  friction,  and  open 
hostility.  Not  all  the  fine  speeches  at  bankers'  dinners 
or  missionary  gatherings  will  ever  change  that  elemental 
fact  of  human  nature,  and  the  sooner  we  frankly  recog 
nize  it  and,  instead  of  trying  to  shoo  it  away  with  fine 
words,  adjust  our  lives  to  it,  the  better  for  all  mankind. 
We  Americans  may  easily  become  pugnacious  again,  for 
get  old  war  debts,  and  allow  ourselves  to  be  led  into  an- 


174  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

other  foreign  war  after  we  have  become  deeply  involved 
in  the  fortunes  of  Asia.  This  outcome  is  not  inevitable. 
It  is  merely  possible.  To  forestall  it,  the  world  must 

l  resort  to  methods  hitherto  unused  by  diplomats. 
/     The  era  during  which  Japan  will  progressively  eman- 

;  cipate  herself  from  foreign  markets,  at  least  on  the  im 
port  side,  will  certainly  continue  for  the  next  thirty  or 
forty  years,  precisely  as  it  did  in  the  case  of  Germany, 

/  though  with  a  very  different  outcome.  Before  this 
emancipation  has  been  completed,  a  few  factors  will 
enter  into  the  situation  and.  modify  it  profoundly.  It 
will  be  the  real  crisis  of  overpopulation.  If  we  assume 
no*  radical  change  either  in-  government  or  in  policy  dur 
ing  this  time,  Japan  will  have,  by  1930,  at  least  8,000,000 
more  mouths  to  feed  than  to-day;  by  1940,  probably 
17,000,000  more  than  now;  and  by  1950,  fully  25,000,000. 
Being  already  incapable,  of  supporting  her  population  on 
domestic  products  and  being  dangerously  dependent  upon 
foreign  lands  to  pay  her  workers'  wages  by  buying  their 
manufactured  articles,  Japan  will  then  be  in  a  desperate 
predicament. 

To  make  matters  worse,  this  predicament  may  come  to 
a  head  in  the  same  decade  when  the  first  wide-spread  ef 
fects  of  the  great  new  health  and  hygiene  movement  in 
China  mature.  Since  the  war  both  missionary  societies 
and  public  health  workers  have  redoubled  their  zeal  in 
saving  Chinese  babies  and  cleaning  up  Chinese  towns. 
The  records  of  the  Red  Cross  workers  in  the  treaty  ports 
show  that  substantial  progress  is  there  being  made  in  this 
direction  and  the  recent  action  of  the  Rockefeller  Foun 
dation  in  appropriating  no  less  than  $20,000,000  to  the 
same  end  must  work  an  almost  revolutionary  change  dur- 


THE  DEADLOCK  175 

ing  the  next  thirty  years.  By  the  end  of  that  period 
we  may  confidently  expect  to  see  Shanghai,  Hongkong, 
Canton,  Peking  and  Hankow  transformed  as  whole 
somely  as  Havana  and  Colon  and  Guayaquil  have  been 
under  American  auspices.  All  of  which  is,  of  itself,  very 
good  and  much  to  be  commended ;  but,  when  considered 
in  conjunction  with  the  growth  of  population  in  Japan 
and  the  industrializing  of  China,  it  takes  on  a  very  dif 
ferent  color. 

With  China's  population  then  beginning  to  increase, 
and  with  her  workers  growing  more  and  more  indepen 
dent  of  the  outside  world  for  food  and  clothing,  China 
will  assuredly  develop  a  stronger  national  spirit;  and 
there  will  be  less  room  and  probably  a  colder  welcome 
for  Japanese  workingmen  wherever  the  Chinese  are. 

As  for  Siberia,  there  seems  to  be  a  true  dilemma  there 
for  the  Japanese.  If  the  old  czarist  party  or  any  of  its 
near  relatives  returns  to  power  in  the  next  few  years,  it 
will  be  powerfully  bound  to  France  and  French  invest 
ors,  who  have  billions  invested  in  Siberia  and  have  toiled 
relentlessly  and  unscrupulously  for  the  restoration  of 
that  group  to  political  power.  It  seems  likely  that,  with 
such  an  outcome,  the  interests  of  France  will  be  opposed 
to  Japanese  expansion  in  eastern  Siberia ;  for  the  French, 
who  have  suffered  appalling  financial  losses  in  Russia 
since  the  downfall  of  Kerensky,  will  demand  and  expect 
all  the  first  fruits  of  the  "restored"  Siberia.  On  the 
other  hand,  should  the  soviet  regime  maintain  itself  in 
definitely,  we  may  safely  assume  that  it  will  continue  as 
hostile  to  the  military  autocracy  of  Japan  and  its  eco 
nomic  imperialism  as  it  has  thus  far  been. 

All  of  which  is  cited  as  mere  probability,  with  a  view  to 


176  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

bringing  out  the  third  and  most  ticklish  stage  in  Amer 
ica's  future  relations  with  Japan.  If,  and  when,  this 
stage  is  reached,  the  factor  of  man  power  will  not  be  a 
deterrent  in  willing  a  war,  be  it  on  China  or  against 
Russia,  be  it  in  the  United  States  or  in  the  Philippines. 
On  the  contrary,  the  surplus  man  power  will  become  of 
itself  the  one  adequate  cause  of  war.  In  China  to-day 
millions  are  dying  of  starvation  and  the  Government  does 
little  or  nothing  about  it.  But  we  may  be  sure  that  if 
the  day  ever  comes  when  a  few  thousand  Japanese  are 
menaced  by  the  hunger  that  kills,  the  Japanese  Govern 
ment  will  stop  at  nothing  to  better  their  lot.  Whatever 
the  evils  of  feudalism  may  be,  it  has  its  finer  side,  which 
shines  forth  in  a  sincere  desire  to  secure  at  least  the  sim 
pler  needs  of  all  loyal  subjects.  Every  Western  trav 
eler  in  Japan  has  been  impressed  with  the  kindly  and  in 
telligent  energy  of  the  mikado's  officials  in  improving 
the  lot  of  even  the  lowliest  peasants.  That  energy,  we 
may  be  sure,  will  not  abate  as  the  pressure  of  population 
and  increased  economic  independence  both  become  more 
pronounced. 

/  To  sum  up,  then,  there  are  three  fairly  distinct  phases 
in  the  probable  evolution  of  Japanese-American  rela 
tions,  assuming,  as  we  have  been  doing  for  the  sake  of 
argument,  that  international  relations  and  international 
business  are  allowed  to  drift  pretty  much  as  they  now 
are.  We  shall  have,  first,  a  brief  span  of  five  or  ten 
years  of  deadlock  in  which  neither  country  will  be 
able  to  launch  upon  any  war  with  the  other.  A  gest 
ure  of  war  may  be  made,  and  it  is  even  conceivable 
that  a  mere  skirmish  might  be  indulged  in  under  ex 
traordinary  circumstances  of  diplomatic  blundering, 


THE  DEADLOCK  177 

but  this  is  too  remote  to  be  seriously  entertained.  The 
second  phase  will  cover  the  latter  part  of  the  dead 
lock  and  the  ensuing  decade  or  two,  and  will  in  all  prob 
ability  be  a  time  of  major  agreements  and  commercial- 
financial  pacts,  marred  slightly  by  minor  conflicts  of  in 
terest  in  China  and  Siberia,  possibly,  too,  in  the  Philip 
pines.  During  this  time  Japan  will  be  progessively  at 
taining  economic  independence  and  strengthening  her 
hold  upon  the  natural  resources  of  China.  The  third 
phase  will  begin  when  this  emancipation  is  virtually  com 
plete  and  the  increase  of  population  in  Japan  has  be 
come  unendurable.  When  this  last  phase  is  reached, 
war  willjjecome^almost  certain,  assuming  that  America 
"steaHHyincreases  her  economic  interests  in  China  and 
Siberia,  and  also  assuming,  as  we  have  been  doing,  that 
Japan  will  pursue  her  present  policy  of  using  her  politi 
cal  power  to  extend  her  economic  interests  and  then  in 
cluding  all  new  territory  contributing  to  those  interests 
under  her  political  sway. 


CHAPTER  17 
WHAT  SHOULD  WE  DO  ABOUT  IT? 

TN  view  of  this  possible  course  of  events,  what  can  we 
•i-  do?  And  what  should  we  do? 

One  thing  seems  pretty  clear.  Whatever  we  do  to  pre 
vent  a  serious  breach  must  be  done  in  the  next  five  years 
or  so.  After  that  time  things  will  get  out  of  hand.  So 
long  as  war  is  virtually  impossible,  we  may  discuss  the 
crisis  with  extreme  frankness  and  strive  for  a  reasonable 
solution,  but  the  minute  either  party  feels  sure  that  a 
blow  might  be  struck  and  a  victory  won,  open  debate 
grows  increasingly  difficult  and  futile,  precisely  as  it  did 
in  Europe  between  the  Bosnian  affair  of  1908  and  the 
invasion  of  Belgium.  When  the  powder  is  wet,  nobody 
hesitates  to  touch  off  a  match  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
powder-magazine.  But  when  it  is  dry ! 

It  is,  of  course,  conceivable  that  we  might  try  forcing 
a  sane  readjustment  by  non-militant  forces.  Thus  we 
might  say  to  Japan:  MYour  course  in  Shantung  and  in 
northern  Sakhalin  is  a  menace  to  world  peace.  Unless 
you  abandon  it  and  make  due  amends,  we,  the  people  of 
the  United  States,  will,  on  a  certain  date,  place  an  em 
bargo  upon  all  goods  consigned  to  your  country,  the  same 
to  continue  as  long  as  you  hold  to  your  present  conti- 
snental  policies."  Such  an  act  would  probably  bring  an 
'appalling  panic,  political  and  financial,  in  the  island  em 
pire.  For,  remember,  Japan  depends  upon  us  for  half 

178 


WHAT  SHOULD  WE  DO  ABOUT  IT?        179 

of  her  cotton  and  for  many  other  manufacturing  essen 
tials  and  we  buy  most  of  her  export  silk.  To  lose  at  one 
stroke  several  vital  raw  materials  and  her  best  customer 
would  shatter  her  already  unstable  industrial  system, 
which  is  now  suffering  acutely  from  over-expansion  and 
unemployment. 

But  what  would  be  accomplished  by  such  a  move  on 
our  part?  It  is  more  than  doubtful  whether  it  would 
force  the  hand  of  a  race  as  proud  and  as  full  of  self- 
justification  as  the  Japanese.  We  may  feel  quite  certain 
that  it  would  only  act  as  a  threat  of  armed  force  would. 
It  would  unify  the  nation  against  us.  The  Government 
would  capitalize  the  sufferings,  real  and  imaginary, 
which  our  embargo  promised  to  cause;  and  in  the  end 
we  should  find  ourselves  better  hated  and  more  com 
pletely  ignored  than  ever  in  northeastern  Asia. 

Nor  would  the  effects  at  home  be  pleasanter.  Our 
manufacturers  and  exporters  would  oppose  such  a  quix 
otic  venture,  which  deprived  them  of  half  a  billion  dol 
lars  of  business  for  the  sake  of  a  political  ideal.  As 
for  the  ordinary  citizen,  he  would  have  no  interest  in 
the  whole  affair,  but  he  would  savagely  resent  being 
dragged  into  another  international  rumpus.  He  is  sick 
of  rumpuses.  He  wants  peace  and  quiet,  no  matter  what 
happens  to  the  babies  of  Armenia  or  the  starvelings  of 
central  Europe  or  the  muzhiks  of  Nikolaievsk.  "We  may 
therefore  conclude  that,  in  the  present  state  of  Ameri 
can  opinion,  neither  war  nor  economic  pressure  can  be 
brought  to  bear  upon  Japan  in  the  interest  of  the  "open 
door"  or  Siberian  sovereignty. 

The  same  must  be  said  of  the  ingenious  "ration 
ing"  plan  recently  advanced  by  Mr.  Carlyon  Bellairs, 


180  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

formerly  a  commander  in  the  British  Navy  and  now  a 
Member  of  Parliament.  Mr.  Bellairs  has  given  much 
thought  to  the  obstacles  that  lie  in  the  way  of  universal 
disarmament.  He  realizes,  as  most  men  do  after  a  close 
study  of  the  matter,  that  Japan  is  the  pivot  of  the 
whole  movement.  If  she  comes  in,  Great  Britain  and 
-America  will  have  no  difficulty  in  joining.  If  she  re 
fuses,  there  is  not  the  slightest  hope  save  through  some 
skilful  coercion.  Mr.  Bellairs  has  therefore  recom 
mended  that,  in  such  an  event,  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States  ought  to  curtail  their  supply  of  steel  to 
Japan  strictly  to  the  amount  needed  for  peaceful  indus 
trial  purposes. 

This  view  has  been  put  forward  by  others  and  has  met 
with  more  or  less  journalistic  approval.  It  was  brilliant 
in  1910.  Today  it  is  absurd.  In  1910  the  Japanese 
militarists  probably  had  serious  thoughts  of  overseas 
campaigns.  Today  they  know  that  there  is  only  one 
possible  procedure,  and  that  is  to  build  a  defensive  screen 
for  themselves  from  Formosa  to  Kamchatka,  behind 
which  they  can  carry  on  their  aggressive  continental 
policy  in  Siberia  and  China.  In  1910,  Japan  was  almost 
wholly  dependent  upon  Great  Britain  and  America  for 
iron  and  steel.  Today,  as  I  show  elsewhere,  her  mines 
at  home,  in  Korea,  in  Manchuria,  and  in  China,  are  more 
than  enough  for  any  defensive  war  against  either  Great 
Britain  or  the  United  States. 

As  for  the  psychological  effect  of  a  rationing  order 
issued  by  Great  Britain  and  America  against  the  Japa 
nese  Government,  nothing  would  delight  the  Tokio  mili 
tarists  more  than  such  a  move.  It  would  enable  them  to 
cry  through  their  newspapers  that  the  Anglo-Saxon 


WHAT  SHOULD  WE  DO  ABOUT  IT?       181 

tyranny  was  scheming  to  crush  the  fatherland  in  order 
to  gain  the  mastery  of  the  Pacific.  And  there  is  not  the 
shadow  of  a  doubt  that  nine  Japanese  out  of  ten  would 
believe  it.  Nine  Americans  out  of  ten  believe  sillier 
cock-and-bull  stories  every  time  they  pick  up  a  Sunday 
newspaper. 

But  what  can  be  done?  Well,  there  seem  to  be  two 
and  only  two  policies  that  offer  fair  prospects.  One  is 
honest  recognition  of  the  brute  fact  that  both  Japan  and 
the  United  States  desire  and  are  able  to  manage  each  its 
own  home  affairs  without  interference  from  the  other. 
The  other  is  a  no  less  honest  recognition  of  the  larger 
fact  that  friendly  relations  between  the  two  countries 
must  be  built  more  and  more  upon  popular  education. 
The  people  of  Japan  must  be  informed  more  fully  about 
what  Americans  need  and  wish.  Americans  also  must 
learn  what  the  troubles  and  the  aspirations  of  the  Japa 
nese  people  really  are.  To  know  such  things  is,  of  course, 
not  to  avoid  grave  conflicts  of  interest.  It  is  absurd  to 
suppose  that  all  such  conflicts  are  founded  solely  upon 
ignorance  or  improper  selfishness.  The  world  is  unfor 
tunately  full  of  men  with  honestly  differing  and  incom 
patible  standards  of  living  and  aspirations.  It  is  full  of 
people  whose  needs  cannot  all  be  equally  satisfied  as 
things  now  stand.  Neither  a  new  morality  nor  an  old 
religion  nor  a  League  of  Nations  will  put  an  end  to  that 
tragic  circumstance.  But  a  more  widely  spread  and  more 
accurate  public  information  concerning  all  such  diffi 
culties  will  at  least  incline  men  to  arrange  better  work 
ing  compromises  than  they  are  now  disposed  to  do. 
After  all,  life,  as  it  now  runs  on,  is  nothing  but  a  series 
of  compromises;  and,  despite  the  abuse  which  has  been 


182  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

heaped  upon  diplomacy  by  many  intelligent  critics,  the 
truth  is  that  this  supposedly  black  art  is  merely  an  at 
tempt  to  work  out  just  such  compromises.  The  sins  of 
diplomats  are  many,  be  it  admitted,  but  in  their  recog 
nition  of  the  wisdom  of  intelligent  compromise,  diplo 
mats  evince  a  higher  moral  vision  than  those  people  pos 
sess  who  suppose  that  the  world  can  be  run  on  some  sim 
ple  and  inflexible  set  of  lofty  principles. 
/  To  achieve  a  sound  compromise  with  Japan,  we  should 
encourage  every  effort  on  that  country's  part  to  dissemi 
nate  information  about  its  own  difficulties  and  unsatis 
fied  needs  among  us  Americans.  We  should  not  be  over- 
quick  to  denounce  every  such  move  as  sinister  propa 
ganda  simply  because  a  good  deal  of  it  has  in  the  past 
been  open  to  such  suspicion.  The  line  between  genuine 
popular  education  and  propaganda  is  vanishingly  thin, 
but  that  is  no  reason  for  refusing  to  listen  to  every 

Vi  statement  from  Japanese  sources. 

As  for  our  own  work,  we  must  begin  with  working  out 
an  intelligent  national  policy ;  and  having  found  one,  we 
must  make  it  known  to  the  world  unequivocally.  We 
should  scorn  the  polite  equivocations  and  euphemisms 
which  have  been  the  stock  in  trade  of  old-school  politics. 

^  They  will  only  perpetuate  evil  misunderstandings. 

So  far  as  Japan  is  concerned,  we  have  not  yet  analyzed 
either  our  difficulties  with  her  or  our  own  national  policy. 
The  studies  that  follow  in  this  volume  are  an  attempt  to 
throw  some  light  on  both.  We  shall  first  survey  the  Jap 
anese  settlements  and  their  activities  in  our  own  terri 
tories,  after  which  we  shall  look  at  certain  outstanding 
forces  in  American  life  which  either  do  or  ought  to  fig 
ure  prominently  in  shaping  our  national  policy. 


BOOK  III 
THE  CRISIS  IN  HAWAII  AND  CALIFORNIA 


CHAPTER  18 
JAPANESE   IN   HAW  AH 

HAWAII  means  nothing  at  all  in  the  political  think 
ing  of  the  average  American.  The  exotic  name 
vaguely  suggests  surf-boards,  savages,  tourist  circulars, 
and  active  volcanoes.  When  a  Presidential  campaign 
comes  along,  you  may  always  be  sure  that  Reno, 
Nevada,  stands  a  better  chance  than  Honolulu  does  of 
figuring  in  the  politicians7  stump  speeches.  Our  politi 
cal  ideas  are  still  of  the  small-town  caliber.  Our  voters 
listen  with  statesmen-like  intentness  to  the  gossips  who 
allege  that  the  candidate  occasionally  beats  his  wife ;  but 
when  somebody  mentions  Hawaii  and  its  relations  to  the 
problem  of  the  Pacific,  the  audience  yawns  and  begins 
to  filter  out  of  the  hall. 

In  this  respect  we  seem  to  be  very  much  like  our  Brit 
ish  cousins.  They,  you  will  recall,  used  to  own  a  tiny 
island  named  Heligoland  close  to  the  coast  of  Germany. 
It  was  scarcely  more  than  a  knob  of  rock  some  fifty  miles 
from  the  Kiel  Canal  and  from  the  mouth  of  the  Elbe 
River.  But  the  rock  was  quite  large  enough  to  be  re 
modeled  into  a  fortress  of  the  first  magnitude.  Only 
thirty  years  ago,  Heligoland  was  the  Hawaii  of  the  Brit 
ish  Empire.  It  was  an  insignificant  dot  in  a  sea  that 
frothed  between  England  and  England's  chief  competi 
tor  in  foreign  trade  and  world  politics.  The  average 
Englishman  knew  and  cared  as  much  about  Heligoland 

185 


186  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

as  our  average  American  cares  about  Maui.  He  had  no 
cousins  or  aunts  on  the  island,  and  the  business  openings 
there  did  not  lure  him.  As  for  its  political  value,  well, 
the  empire  was  too  big  and  too  busy  to  bother  much  over 
a  square  mile  of  waste  rock  and  sand.  So  he  raised  no 
cry  when,  in  1890,  the  Germans  wheedled  Lord  Salisbury 
to  trade  Heligoland  for  a  slice  of  German  Africa.  There 
were  some  Englishmen,  to  be  sure,  who  protested  and 
talked  about  strategic  points  and  such  strange  things; 
but  the  rank  and  file  of  Great  Britain  was  quite  content 
to  let  the  deal  be  put  through. 

So  the  German  flag  was  raised  over  this  dot  of  rock, 
and  from  that  hour  forth  the  history  of  the  world  was 
written  with  a  new  hand,  and  with  a  pen  of  iron  dipped 
in  blood.  To-day  every  schoolboy  in  England  knows 
that  it  was  the  British  indifference  to  Heligoland  and 
the  sale  of  the  island  to  Germany  that  made  the  German 
Navy  possible. 

It  was  the  sale  of  Heligoland  that  made  possible  the 
German  invasion  of  Belgium  and  the  establishment  of 
submarine  bases  on  the  Belgian  coast  and  in  Ireland. 

And  it  was  these  bases  that  prolonged  the  war  at  least 
a  year  and  brought  the  United  States  into  the  fray  and 
cost  billions  of  money  and  perhaps  a  million  lives. 

Now,  the  Hawaiian  Islands  are  so  many  Heligolands 
of  the  Pacific.  In  comparison  with  the  rest  of  the  United 
States,  they  are  mere  dots,  smaller  than  the  run  of  coun 
ties  in  our  Western  States.  Their  natural  wealth,  while 
considerable  in  proportion  to  their  size,  is  nothing  but 
small  change  in  the  coffers  of  Uncle  Sam.  Not  one 
American  in  twenty  thousand  has  ever  the  slightest  busi 
ness  relations  with  anybody  in  the  Islands.  Not  one 


JAPANESE  IN  HAWAII  187 

American  in  five  thousand  ever  makes  even  a  pleasure 
trip  thither.  It  takes  too  much  time  and  money  to  get 
there  and  back.  Thus  it  comes  about  that  we  ignore  or 
belittle  Hawaii  precisely  as  <*ir  Anglo-Saxon  relatives 
beyond  the  Atlantic  used  to  ignore  or  belittle  Heligoland. 
At  the  same  time  Hawaii  has  all  of  the  importance  of 
Heligoland  and  even  more.  Heligoland  was  valuable  to 
Great  Britain  only  as  a  naval  base,  as  a  defensive  out 
post  against  possible  German  aggression.  It  possessed 
absolutely  no  value  in  the  upbuilding  of  world  commerce. 
It  did  not  lie  on  a  great  trade  route  where  merchant 
ships  must  put  in  for  coal  or  for  repairs.  Hawaii,  how 
ever,  is  not  only  one  of  the  world's  most  strategic  naval 
bases ;  it  is  a  very  rich  sugar  and  pineapple  country  and 
also  the  best  located  coaling-station  on  the  great  steamer 
tracks  of  the  Pacific.  Vessels  plying  between  America 
and  Australia  or  between  America  and  Asia  must  put 
in  at  Honolulu,  or  else  burden  themselves  unduly  with 
extra  stocks  of  coal  that  eat  up  cargo  space  and  profits. 

HAWAII   HAS   BECOME   JAPANESE 

Great  Britain  sold  Heligoland  to  Germany  for  a  piece 
of  Africa,  and  thereby  lost  billions  in  money  and  a  million 
lives.  The  United  States  is  selling  Hawaii,  not  to  the 
mikado,  but  to  thousands  of  his  subjects ;  we  are  getting 
in  payment  not  other  land,  but  the  labor  and  services 
of  the  buyers.  Will  the  outcome  be  another  Heligoland  ? 

That  question  is  a  hard  one  and  must  wait.  Let  us 
first  look  at  things  as  they  are  to-day  in  Hawaii.  What 
do  we  see  ? 

We  see  that  more  than  six  out  of  every  ten  people  in 
the  islands  are  Asiatics. 


188  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

We  see  that  four  out  of  every  ten  people  there  are 
Japanese. 

We  see  that  fewer  than  one  out  of  every  ten  people 
there  are  Americans  of  some  European  stock  in  the 
United  States. 

Out  of  a  total  of  263,666  population  in  Hawaii  to-day, 
we  find  159,900  Asiatics.  The  new  United  States  census 
shows  that  of  these,  109,269  are  Japanese. 

Now,  when  you  figure  what  this  means,  bear  in  mind 
that  Hawaii  is  a  territory,  like  Alaska.  It  is  not  like 
Porto  Eico  or  the  Philippines,  a  dependency,  neither  in 
nor  out  of  the  United  States,  and  hanging  upon  the  good 
will  of  Washington  for  the  power  to  do  things  and  have 
things  done  to  it.  Native  Hawaiians  are  American  citi 
zens.  Their  rights  are  guaranteed  them  under  the  Con 
stitution.  Children  born  in  Hawaii  are  American  citi 
zens  without  further  ceremony,  be  their  parents  of  any 
origin  whatsoever. 

Do  you  see  what  this  leads  to  so  far  as  the  Japanese  are 
concerned  ?  Suppose  we  merely  allow  those  already  here 
to  remain.  How  about  their  increase  in  numbers  and 
power? 

The  survey  made  by  the  United  States  Commissioner 
of  Education  in  1919  shows  plainly  that  in  ten  more 
years,  twenty-eight  out  of  every  hundred  voters  in  Ha 
waii  will  be  Japanese.  And  in  twenty  years  from  now 
about  forty-seven  out  of  every  hundred  will  be.  After 
twenty  years  the  number  of  Japanese  voters  will  double 
every  twenty  years  as  the  grandchildren  of  the  present 
voters  grow  up. 

By  1930,  then,  it  seems  probable  that  the  Japanese 
may  comprise  about  twenty-eight  per  cent  of  the  electo- 


JAPANESE  IN  HAWAII  189 

rate,  a  sufficiently  large  proportion  to  constitute  a  force 
that  must  be  reckoned  with  if  it  acts  as  a  unit.  By  1940, 
about  forty-seven  per  cent  of  the  electorate  may  be  ex 
pected  to  be  composed  of  voters  of  this  race.  From  that 
time  on,  their  numerical  superiority  will  grow  rapidly, 
the  voters  doubling  every  twenty  years  as  children  of 
children  enter  the  electorate. 

You  may  well  make  the  observation  that  the  Japa 
nese  population  of  Hawaii  cannot  go  on  increasing  by 
leaps  and  bounds  very  much  longer,  for  the  islands  are 
tiny.  True  enough.  And  in  this  fact  lies  the  prospect 
of  a  steadily  rising  tide  of  yellow  travelers  from  Hono 
lulu  to  San  Francisco  and  later  perhaps  to  New  Orleans. 
The  children  of  Japan-born  parents,  being  themselves 
American  citizens,  will  be  free  to  shift  to  the  mainland 
of  our  country  as  soon  as  the  opportunity  for  easy  living 
in  Hawaii  fades  away. 

Should  we  allow  Japanese  laborers  to  continue  coming 
to  Hawaii,  as  they  have  been  in  the  past,  we  sliould  thus 
establish  a  permanent  source  of  Japanese  immigration 
into  the  United  States ;  and  if  we  allowed  these  laborers 
to  bring  in  native  wives,  that  immigration  would  increase 
still  faster,  and  set  up  in  the  United  States  a  great  Japa 
nese  colony  with  high  birth  rate  and  ever  declining  death 
rate. 

All  this  is,  of  course,  nothing  against  the  Japanese. 
It  is  a  mere  statement  of  fact.  Before  we  can  judge  it 
for  good  or  for  evil,  we  must  observe  carefully  what  the 
Japanese  in  Hawaii  are  doing. 

On  this  subject  we  fortunately  have  a  wealth  of  detail 
collected  and  dispassionately  reported  by  the  United 
States  Commissioner  of  Education  in  the  same  educa- 


190  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tional  survey  from  which  we  have  already  quoted.  The 
four  members  of  the  commission  making  this  survey  are : 

Frank  F.  Bunker,  Bureau  of  Education,  director  of 
the  survey. 

W.  W.  Kemp,  chairman  of  education  department,  Uni 
versity  of  California. 

Parke  R.  Kolbe,  president  Municipal  University,  Ak 
ron,  Ohio. 

George  R.  Twiss,  professor  of  secondary  education  and 
state  high-school  inspector,  Ohio  State  University. 

While  these  gentlemen  were  officially  interested  pri 
marily  in  the  schools  of  Hawaii  and  their  unusual  prob 
lems,  they  found  it  necessary  to  study  the  population  of 
the  islands  and  their  condition  and  tendencies.  In  doing 
this  they  came  upon  some  highly  significant  facts. 

They  found,  for  instance,  that  the  Japanese  workers 
are  morally  and  mentally  superior  to  all  other  groups, 
and  hence  are  outstripping  these  in  competition.  They 
say: 

"Furthermore,  it  should  be  said  in  fairness  that  there  are  few 
Japanese  children  in  the  juvenile  courts  and  in  the  institu 
tions  for  delinquents.  And  there  are  proportionally  very  few 
Japanese  among  the  convict  labor  gangs  and  in  the  jails.  Few, 
if  any,  are  supported  by  public  charity;  nor  are  any  begging 
on  the  street.  Their  per  capita  savings  bank  deposits  rank 
third  among  those  of  the  island  races,  being  exceeded  by  the 
Americans  and  Portuguese  only.  All  of  which  activity,  laud 
able  in  itself,  can  be  explained  adequately  on  the  basis  of  racial 
qualities  inherent  in  the  Japanese,  of  patience,  persistence, 
thrift,  initiative,  endurance,  ambition,  group  solidarity, 
coupled  with  acumen  and  astuteness  which  give  them  the 
ability  to  get  on  where  other  races  have  failed.  Indeed,  so 
well  have  the  Japanese  adjusted  themselves  to  island  condi- 


JAPANESE  IN  HAWAII  191 

tions  and  so  rapidly  are  they  increasing  in  the  number  of 
Hawaiian  born  children,  that  this  group  will  soon  have  a 
majority  of  the  voters  of  the  island." 

As  we  shall  see  later,  this  verdict  agrees  completely 
with  that  of  all  distinterested  observers  of  the  situation 
in  California.  These  little  yellow  men  are  not  drunk 
ards,  as  many  Irish,  German,  and  English  are.  They  are 
not  loafers,  as  many  negroes  and  back-country  Americans 
are.  They  are  not  spendthrifts,  as  nearly  all  Americans 
are  to  some  degree.  They  are  not  criminal,  as  many 
people  of  all  European  stocks  are.  They  are,  in  brief, 
more  nearly  model  laborers  than  any  other  type  with 
which  we  Americans  have  as  yet  come  in  contact. 

The  survey  commissioners  make  the  further  observa 
tion  that  just  as  the  Japanese  stand  out  above  and  apart 
from  all  the  other  groups  mentally  and  morally,  so  do 
they  hold  aloof  from  these  other  groups.  They  do  not 
intermarry,  and  they  strive  to  preserve  their  language 
and  culture  intact. 

"Upon  comparison  with  Chinese  marriages  and  intermar 
riages,  it  is  noted  that  there  is  little  tendency  on  the  part  of 
the  Japanese  to  amalgamate  with  the  Hawaiians,  whereas  the 
Chinese  have  contributed  largely  to  the  formation  of  the  Chi 
nese-Caucasian-Hawaiian  mixture.  Neither  do  the  Japanese 
marry  as  freely  with  the  Portuguese  as  the  Chinese  have  done. 

"The  Japanese  and  Koreans  contrast  strongly  with  the  Chi 
nese  in  race  mixture;  former  groups  evincing  strong  clannish- 
ness  in  marital  selections;  the  latter  groups  freely  breeding 
'out.' 

"In  general,  Japanese  marry  only  Japanese;  they  show  re 
markable  racial  allegiance,  more  so,  as  a  race,  than  any  other 
in  Hawaii.  A  few  Japanese  men  have  married  Hawaiian, 


192  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

part-Hawaiian,  and  Portuguese  women;  only  one  has  married 
an  American  woman.  There  are  surprisingly  few  marriages 
between  the  Japanese  and  the  other  Asiatic  peoples  in  Hawaii." 

In  this  respect  the  Japanese  are  much  like  the  British. 
When  England  was  building  up  her  empire,  she  sent 
millions  of  her  sons  into  India,  Egypt,  South  Africa, 
the  China  coast,  Australia,  Malaysia,  the  West  Indies, 
Canada,  and  the  South  Seas.  These  men  settled  down 
in  the  midst  of  many  different  races,  but  seldom  did  they 
marry  native  women  and  adopt  local  customs  and  lan 
guage.  The  Englishman  felt  himself  superior  to  these 
peoples  whose  lands  he  invaded.  He  loathed  the  thought 
of  demeaning  himself  to  their  cultural  level.  He  was  in 
blunt  fact  altogether  self-satisfied.  And  so  is  the  Japa 
nese. 

He  sees  no  reason  why  he  or  his  children  should  for 
sake  his  ways,  for  his  ways  seem  good.  And  the  proof 
that  they  are  good  is  that  they  enable  him  to  succeed  in 
competition  with  these  other  races.  So  it  is  that  the 
Japanese  in  Hawaii  have  established  their  own  schools, 
in  which  the  Japanese  language  and  Japanese  ideas  are 
taught. 

Listen  to  the  American  commissioners  on  this  point. 
They  will  surprise  you : 

"Another  handicap  of  serious  character  under  which  the  pub 
lic  schools  of  the  Territory  are  laboring  and  with  which  there 
is  nothing  comparable  in  the  States,  is  the  system  of  foreign 
language  schools  which  has  grown  to  formidable  proportions, 
particularly  among  the  Japanese.  Among  the  island  settle 
ments,  however  isolated  or  remote,  wherever  there  is  a  group  of 
Japanese  laborers  and  their  families,  there  is,  alongside  the 
public  school  or  very  near  to  it,  a  school  set  apart  for  the 


JAPANESE  IN  HAWAII  193 

Japanese  children  who  attend  the  public  school.  One  year 
ago  there  were  163  of  these  schools  in  the  Hawaiian  Islands, 
manned  by  449  teachers  and  having  an  aggregate  enrollment 
of  about  20,000  pupils.  A  number  of  new  schools  have  been 
organized  since,  and  in  instances,  considerable  sums,  reaching 
$7,000  in  one  case,  have  been  expended  for  the  purchase  of  ad 
ditional  sites.  In  addition  to  the  Japanese,  the  Koreans  and 
Chinese  have  established  language  schools,  some  22  in  number 
with  about  40  teachers  and  approximately  2,000  pupils. 

"Almost  all  of  these  schools  are  of  elementary  grade,  though 
there  are  a  few  kindergartens ;  and  in  11  schools  the  work  par 
allels  the  Territorial  high  schools,  in  part  at  least.  In  all  in 
stances  the  teachers  of  the  Japanese  schools  are  brought  direct 
from  Japan  for  the  purpose.  They  are  certified  teachers  in 
their  home  country  and,  in  a  number  of  cases,  are  recom 
mended  by  their  local  Japanese  authorities  and  the  educational 
department  of  Japan.  None  of  the  teachers  were  born  or 
educated  in  Hawaii." 

Why  should  the  teachers  of  these  twenty  thousand 
children  all  be  brought  from  Japan?  WTiy  do  the 
schools  not  choose  young  Japanese  from  California,  let 
us  say,  who  speak  both  Japanese  and  English  fluently 
and  know  something  about  American  ways  and  institu 
tions?  Would  it  not  seem  reasonable  to  teach  these  chil 
dren  about  their  new  fatherland  as  well  as  about  their 
old  one? 

On  this  point  the  commissioners  quote  from  an  eminent 
Japanese  educator: 

"While,  doubtless,  many  teachers  are  brought  from  Japan 
rather  than  procured  from  among  Hawaiian-born  Japanese 
because  it  is  sincerely  believed  that  they  speak  a  purer  Japa 
nese,  nevertheless  some,  at  least,  share  the  opinion  frankly  ex 
pressed  recently  before  the  Japanese  Educational  Association 


194  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

of  Maui  by  Mr.  Obata  Shusan,  formerly  head  priest  of  the 
Mitsuki  Girls'  School.  In  characterizing  the  type  of  in 
structor  which  he  thought  the  language  schools  needed,  he  said : 
"'Any  man  who  is  to  teach  in  Japanese  language  schools 
should  not  be  a  man  with  democratic  ideas.  The  language 
school  is  not  a  place  for  a  man  with  strong  democratic  ideas. 
A  man  of  strong  Japanese  ideas  should  be  its  teacher/  " 

School-teachers  in  Hawaii  interviewed  by  the  commis 
sioners  testified  in  the  main  as  did  the  one  who  made  the 
following  remarks: 

"It  is  pretty  hard  to  teach  American  ideals  to  a  child  who 
does  his  thinking  in  Japanese.  .  .  . 

"As  one  who  speaks  Japanese  and  has  had  long  experience 
in  teaching  Orientals,  I  wish  to  say  that  if  the  Japanese 
schools  are  continued,  we  shall  have  a  mongrel  citizenship, 
both  in  language  and  customs. 

"The  Japanese  schools  under  cover  of  religious  instruction, 
teach  the  children  loyalty  to  their  Emperor  and  country.  The 
Japanese  language  schools  must  go,  if  we  are  to  teach  the 
young  Japanese  to  become  Americans." 

Here  again  we  see  how  very  much  like  the  English 
man,  the  Frenchman,  and  the  German,  our  Japanese 
neighbors  are.  When  the  Englishman  went  to  India,  he 
took  his  school-teachers  with  him,  and  the  school-teacher 
took  his  ideas  with  him,  in  his  head  as  well  as  in  his 
school-books.  When  the  devout  but  very  low  French 
peasant  emigrated  to  Canada  two  centuries  ago,  he  did 
the  very  same  thing.  And  in  the  province  of  Quebec 
to-day  you  find  the  religion  and  the  politics  and  the  fam 
ily  morals  of  the  eighteenth  century  still  being  taught 
in  the  French  language.  The  people  of  France  have  long 
since  outgrown  these  ideas  and  customs,  because  France 


JAPANESE  IN  HAWAII  195 

has  continually  adjusted  herself  to  the  times,  has  learned 
new  things,  has  faced  new  problems,  and  has  modified 
her  own  life  to  fit  the  environment.  But  the  French  of 
Quebec  cling  to  the  shadow  of  a  dead  past  with  fanati 
cal  sentiment alism.  The  Japanese  in  Hawaii  are  com 
mitted  to  this  fatal  policy,  which  is  the  most  un- 
American  of  all  things.  They  are  perpetuating  not  only 
the  Japanese  language,  but  also  political  ideas  and  Bud 
dhism. 

The  power  of  Buddhism  in  Hawaii  is  great.  The  com 
missioners  find  that 

"The  Nishi  Hongwanji  is  by  far  the  strongest  Buddhist  sect 
in  the  islands,  as  in  Japan,  embracing  about  75,000  members  of 
the  island  population.  This  sect  in  Japan  is  controlled  by  a 
cabinet  formed  of  high  priests  at  whose  head  stands  the 
Hoss  or  chief  priest.  The  Hoss  is  held  in  very  high  es 
teem  by  members  of  the  sect,  who  honor  him  as  they  would 
a  living  Buddha.  The  Hoss  is  represented  in  the  Islands  by  a 
'Kantoku'  (Bishop  Imamura),  who  has  absolute  authority 
over  the  priests  and  teachers  of  the  sect  as  well  as  over  its 
members,  controlling  the  whole  body,  according  to  a  Japanese 
authority,  'as  easily  as  he  moves  his  fingers.'  " 

Now,  no  American  worthy  of  the  name  would  wish  to 
suppress  Buddhism  or  any  other  religion  so  long  as  its 
practices  were  not  obviously  working  an  injury  to  other 
people  who  did  not  believe  in  its  tenets.  If  the  Japa 
nese  wish  to  be  Buddhists,  all  well  and  good;  but  in 
dealing  with  Buddhism,  we  must  take  into  account  the 
part  it  may  be  playing  in  establishing  an  alien  culture 
in  our  society  which  may  cause  great  trouble.  It  is  an 
almost  universal  tendency  of  transplanted  religions  and 
cults  to  struggle  to  reinforce  themselves  by  playing  poll- 


196  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tics.  We  have  seen,  for  example,  the  Roman  Catholics 
in  America  fight  for  years  to  maintain  their  own  reli 
gious  schools,  and  to  this  end  either  seeking  an  exemption 
from  public-school  taxes  or  else  gaining  public  support 
for  their  own  schools.  This  struggle,  as  you  know,  has 
been  the  source  of  much  friction  in  many  parts  of  our 
country.  And  no  good  ever  comes  of  it. 

It  would  not  be  accurate  to  close  this  survey  without 
citing  the  testimony  of  the  American  teachers  in  the 
islands  who  are  convinced  that  the  tendency  toward  the 
creation  of  a  narrow  Japanese  culture  there  is  weakening. 
Here  are  two  very  strong  statements  from  them : 

"The  majority  of  the  parents  who  migrated  there  from  Japan 
were  also  subject  and  susceptible  to  this  influence.  Therefore, 
it  is  an  undisputed  fact  that  the  influence  of  the  Japanese 
language  schools  up  to  three  years  ago  was  a  menace. 

"But  fortunately,  our  entrance  into  the  Great  War,  our 
gigantic  resources  operating  during  the  same,  the  unity  and 
patriotism  of  the  American  people,  the  enormous  over-subscrip 
tion  of  the  Liberty  Loans,  to  say  nothing  of  the  fighting  quali 
ties  of  our  boys,  demonstrated  in  the  trenches  of  Europe,  and 
the  respect  shown  us  by  the  whole  world,  have  all  tended  to  ex 
plode  the  unfounded  pro-Japanese  influence  of  the  Japanese 
language  schools. 

"Evidently,  when  the  test  arose,  the  teachings  and  influence 
of  the  American  schools  predominated  and  the  American  citi 
zens  of  Japanese  parents  were  as  anxious  to  prove  their  Amer 
ican  patriotism  as  any  others.  Hundreds  joined  the  Army  and 
thousands  of  dollars  were  invested  in  War  Savings  and  Lib 
erty  Bonds.  The  school  curriculum  was  changed  considerably 
along  American  lines.  The  American-born  children  demanded 
and  exercised  their  birthright.  The  parents  underwent  a  very 
perceptible  mental  change  to  such  an  extent  that,  within  four 


JAPANESE  IN  HAWAII  197 

or  five  years  hence,  the  Japanese  language  schools  will  become 
obsolete. 

'In  conclusion,  I  state  with  confidence  that  the  present  in 
fluence  of  the  Japanese  schools  is  more  favorable  toward 
America  than  Japan." 

The  second  teacher  pins  her  faith  in  the  rising  genera 
tion.  She  says : 

"The  schools  retard  the  teaching  of  English.  However,  the 
English  of  the  Japanese  pupils  is  better  than  that  of  the 
Hawaiian  and  Portuguese  in  elementary  schools,  although  I  ad 
mit  that  out  of  school  it  may  be  less  and  more  limited.  These 
schools  are  not  as  unpatriotic  toward  America  as  some  would 
have  us  believe.  Love  for  Japan  comes  from  the  mother  and 
father,  particularly  from  the  mother  if  she  be  a  picture  bride 
from  Japan,  knowing  nothing  of  Americanism.  She  trains 
the  child  for  six  years  before  the  schools  have  the  child.  The 
Japanese  child  believes  that  he  can  love  both  countries  as  he 
does  his  father  and  mother  and  will  tell  you  that.  This  status 
of  double  allegiance  would  be  put  to  a  test  if  the  countries  be 
came  unfriendly.  The  younger  generation  of  Japanese  edu 
cated  in  public  schools  would  favor  America,  I  honestly  be 
lieve." 

This  is  most  encouraging,  but  one  is  tempted  to  wonder 
what  may  happen  in  the  years  before  the  older  genera 
tion  of  Japanese  has  passed.  We  suspect  that  the  greater 
Oriental  crisis,  of  which  our  own  is  but  a  faint  premo 
nition,  will  come  to  a  head  long  before  then. 


CHAPTER  19 
JAPANESE  IN   CALIFOENIA 

ALL  the  other  grievances  which  Americans  harbor 
against  the  Japanese  nation  and  her  people  are 
as  nothing  beside  those  arising  from  the  so-called  ll  in 
vasion  ' '  of  California.  Few  Americans  east  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  understand  the  intense  feeling  which  this  situ 
ation  is  causing  on  the  Pacific  coast.  The  general  opin 
ion  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard  is  probably  summed  up 
fairly  well  by  "The  Nation,"  which  we  have  already 
quoted:  "A  State  which  imagines  that  a  Japanese  popu 
lation  of  87,279  in  a  total  population  of  3,200,000  threat 
ens  the  destruction  of  its  social  order  ...  is  suffering 
from  a  bad  case  of  '  nerves. '  ; 

Superficially,  this  seems  to  be  a  fair  comment;  but 
when  we  plunge  into  details,  we  find  it  is  a  complete  mis 
apprehension.  Although  the  remark  was  made  in  con 
nection  with  an  editorial  about  the  recent  report  of  the 
California  State  Board  of  Control  on  the  Japanese  situ 
ation,  it  is  clear  that  the  editors  did  not  read  this  report 
closely ;  for  the  report  proves  at  least  one  thing ;  it  proves 
that,  whether  the  Californians  who  display  agitation  over 
the  Japanese  "invasion"  are  right  or  wrong  in  their 
demands  for  exclusion,  they  certainly  are  not  suffering 
from  "a  bad  case  of  'nerves/  '  They  are  suffering 
from  a  bad  case  of  facts. 

Let  us  look  at  some  of  these  facts,  all  of  which  have 

198 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  199 

been  sought  out,  carefully  analyzed,  and  reported  in  the 
fairest  manner  conceivable  by  the  State  Board  of  Con 
trol,  in  a  book  of  231  pages  packed  with  well-compiled 
statistics,  maps,  and  special  investigations. 

In  the  first  place  as  to  the  number  of  Japanese  in  Cali 
fornia,  the  official  State  figure  of  87,279  is  certainly  far 
below  the  mark.  And  the  more  recent  returns  of  the 
Federal  Census,  namely,  70,196,  is  still  further  off.  And 
for  this  there  are  three  causes.  In  the  first  place,  because 
of  the  difficulty  of  finding  Americans  who  could  speak 
Japanese  well  enough  to  take  the  census  in  the  Japanese 
districts  of  California,  Japanese  census  takers  were  ap 
pointed.  Soon  after  the  census  reports  began  coming  in 
from  these  regions,  people  were  struck  by  the  poor  show 
ing  the  Japanese  made.  Offhand  estimates  place  their 
numbers  in  various  neighborhoods  far  above  those  given 
by  the  officials.  According  to  newspaper  reports,  on 
which  we  dare  not  place  much  reliance,  of  course,  some 
volunteer  census-takers  have  checked  over  certain  of  the 
suspected  districts  and  have  found  the  correct  number 
of  Japanese  to  be  greater  than  reported  totals.  This 
need  not  surprise  us.  For  few  Japanese  census  takers 
would  be  over-zealous  in  making  the  number  of  their 
countrymen  out  to  be  as  large  as  possible. 

In  the  second  place,  thousands  of  Japanese  live  in  the 
interior  valle}Ts,  many  parts  of  which  are  very  remote 
and  extremely  difficult  to  canvass  thoroughly.  It  is  well 
known  that  even  the  best  census  takers  seldom  catch  all 
the  people  in  such  regions.  And  nothing  is  easier  for  the 
Japanese  who  does  n  't  care  to  be  quizzed  than  to  lock  up 
his  shack  and  go  wandering  off  when  the  rumor  flies  that 
a  government  fellow  is  coming. 


200  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

In  the  third  place,  Japanese  are  stealing  into  the 
State  over  the  Mexican  line,  and  as  that  border  is  very 
long  and  impossible  to  patrol  with  any  degree  of  rigor, 
nobody  knows  how  many  men  are  coming  across.  Once 
over  the  line,  these  Japanese  have  plenty  of  room  to  hide 
in ;  for  California  is  a  sizable  State,  full  of  remote  moun 
tain  valleys,  in  which  thousands  of  settlers  might  fairly 
lose  themselves  and  no  outsider  be  the  wiser.  The  State 
Board  of  Control  sums  up  the  whole  matter  as  follows : 

"Smuggling  across  the  border,  especially  the  Mexican  bor 
der,  has  proven  exceedingly  difficult  for  the  United  States 
Immigration  Service  to  prevent.  The  federal  immigration 
patrol  upon  the  Mexican  border  is  entirely  inadequate;  the 
California-Mexican  frontier  is  180  miles  in  length  and  the 
physical  character  of  the  country  is  such  that  it  is  possible  to 
cross  the  border  at  almost  any  point;  and  the  big  fishing  fleet, 
manned  principally  by  Japanese  with  large  power  boats,  which 
is  constantly  going  back  and  forth  from  American  waters  into 
Mexican  waters,  provides  exceedingly  convenient  means  of  un 
lawful  entry  for  Japanese  in  particular.  Furthermore  there 
are  many  Japanese  engaged  in  agricultural  pursuits  in  the 
Imperial  Valley  on  both  sides  of  the  border,  and  the  Japanese 
so  engaged  are  passing  to  and  fro  across  the  line  constantly. 
Such  conditions  render  most  difficult  the  cheeking  of  those  who 
cross  and  reeross  the  border.  The  United  States  Commis 
sioner  General  of  Immigration  in  his  report  of  January  30th, 
1919,  declares  that  smuggling  of  Japanese  across  the  Mexican 
border  is  carried  on  successfully  and  to  a  large  extent,  his  lan 
guage  being  as  follows:  'Confidential  information  of  unques 
tionable  authenticity  shows  very  conclusively  that  Japanese 
smuggling  across  the  Mexican  border  is  carried  on  successfully 
and  doubtless  to  a  very  large  extent.  Southern  California  pos 
sesses  a  peculiar  attraction  to  the  Japanese  and  it  seems  in- 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  201 

evitable  that  if  some  effective  means  are  not  found  to  curb  fur 
ther  growth,  the  Japanese  colonies  in  that  section  will  expand 
in  time  into  such  proportions  as  to  create  a  serious  problem. 
"  'Once  safely  across  the  line,  the  contrabands  find  conceal 
ment  at  conveniently  located  ranches  conducted  by  fellow 
countrymen,  where  they  work  for  small  wages  until  a  smat 
tering  of  English  and  an  air  of  sophistication  are  acquired, 
when  they  proceed  toward  their  respective  ultimate  destina 
tions.  When  any  of  such  contrabands  are  arrested,  the  resi 
dent  Japanese  who  have  given  them  asylum,  rush  to  their  de 
fense  and  if  necessary,  do  not  hesitate  to  perjure  themselves 
as  to  the  period  of  residence  in  the  United  States  of  the  ar 
rested  alien.  Vigorous  measures  and  unremitting  zeal  on  the 
part  of  the  immigration  officers,  resulting  in  the  arrest  and  de 
portation  of  large  numbers  of  contrabands  of  this  class  and 
the  prosecution  of  such  of  the  ringleaders  and  co-conspirators 
of  lesser  importance  as  could  be  found  in  the  United  States, 
have  served,  temporarily  at  least,  to  check  the  influx.  The 
participation  in  this  illegal  traffic  of  domiciled  aliens,  without 
whose  assistance  it  could  not  survive,  has  been  discouraged  to 
no  inconsiderable  degree  by  the  prosecution  instituted  during 
the  past  year.  It  should  be  understood,  however,  that  the 
same  situation  has  confronted  the  district  on  previous  oc 
casions  and  will  again  arise  if  there  is  any  relaxation  of  rig 
orous  vigilance.  In  order  to  keep  the  problem  in  hand,  a  suf 
ficient  force  of  alert,  resourceful  officers  must  at  all  times  be 
maintained/  " 

A  casual  inspection  of  some  sixty  miles  of  this  border 
stretch  leads  me  to  believe  that  the  above  remarks  under 
state  the  difficulties  of  the  patrol.  And  three  members 
of  the  latter  with  whom  I  talked  more  than  confirmed 
this  impression.  Indeed,  I  should  regard  it  as  a  triumph 
of  efficiency  if  these  men,  working  under  the  present 


202  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

system,  caught  one  Japanese  out  of  every  five  who  stole 
over  the  line.  Nothing  short  of  a  barbed  wire  entangle 
ment,  search  lights,  and  twenty-four-hour  patrolling 
from  San  Diego  to  the  Gulf  of  California  would  control 
the  situation. 

So  far,  then,  as  mere  numbers  go,  the  Californians 
have  not  developed  ' '  a  bad  case  of  nerves ' '  over  a  paltry 
87,279  Japanese.  They  have,  if  you  please,  become  wor 
ried  over  the  possibility  that  these  87,279  persons  are 
really  about  125,000  persons.  Certainly  125,000  Japa 
nese  are  more  than  twice  as  likely  to  disturb  American 
civilization  as  87,279  are;  for  it  is  well  recognized  by 
sociologists  that  the  cohesiveness  of  such  cultural  groups 
increases  in  almost  geometrical  proportion  to  its  num 
bers.  In  other  words,  if  you  double  the  number  of  peo 
ple  in  any  self-centered  community,  you  multiply  the 
self-sufficiency  of  that  group  something  like  four  times, 
and  for  reasons  into  which  we  cannot  go  here.  If  such 
a  group  tends  to  be  exclusive  and  to  perpetuate  its  lan 
guage,  religion,  and  social  customs,  it  can  and  will  do 
all  this  about  four  times  as  easily  when  doubled. 

Thus  there  are  reasons  for  suspecting  that  the  power 
of  the  Japanese  cultural  group  in  California  may  be 
much  greater  than  the  official  census  might  lead  us  to  be 
lieve. 

Now,  as  to  the  extent  to  which  the  Japanese  have  "  in 
vaded"  the  farming  districts  on  the  coast,  the  report 
sums  up  as  follows : 

"The  Japanese  in  our  midst  have  indicated  a  strong  trend 
to  land  ownership  and  land  control,  and  by  their  unquestioned 
industry  and  application,  and  by  standards  and  methods,  that 
are  widely  separated  from  our  occidental  standards  and  meth- 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  203 

ods  both  in  connection  with  hours  of  labor  and  standards  of 
living,  have  gradually  developed  to  a  control  of  many  of  our 
important  agricultural  industries.  Indeed,  at  the  present  time 
they  operate  458,456  acres  of  the  very  best  lands  in  California. 
The  increase  in  acreage  control  within  the  last  decade,  accord 
ing  to  these  official  figures,  has  been  412.9  per  cent.  In  pro 
ductive  values — that  is  to  say,  in  the  market  value  of  crops  pro 
duced  by  them — our  figures  show  that  as  against  $6,235,856 
worth  of  produce  marketed  in  1909,  the  increase  has  been  to 
$67,145,730,  approximately  tenfold. 

"More  significant  than  these  figures,  however,  is  the  demon 
strated  fact  that  within  the  last  ten  years  the  Japanese  agri 
cultural  labor  has  developed  to  such  a  degree  that  at  the  pres 
ent  time  between  80  and  90  per  cent  of  most  of  our  vegetable 
and  berry  products  are  those  of  Japanese  farms.  Approxi 
mately  80  per  cent  of  the  tomato  crop  of  the  State  is  pro 
duced  by  the  Japanese;  from  80  to  100  per  cent  of  the  spinach 
crop;  a  greater  part  of  the  potato  and  asparagus  crops  and 
sozon.  So  that  it  is  apparent  that  without  much  more  ef 
fective  restrictions  in  a  very  short  time,  historically  speaking, 
the  Japanese  population  within  our  midst  will  represent  a  con 
siderable  portion  of  our  entire  population,  and  the  Japanese 
control  over  certain  essential  food  products  will  be  an  abso 
lute  one." 

It  is  most  important  to  grasp  the  meaning  of  this.  The 
average  man  east  of  the  Rockies  supposes  that  the  Japa 
nese  is  like  the  Chinaman  who  came  to  California  in  the 
old  days.  The  Chinaman  was  a  coolie,  hailing  as  a  rule 
from  Canton,  in  southern  China.  He  was  the  lowest  grade 
of  large-town  worker,  generally  unskilled,  and  ready  to 
turn  his  hand  to  any  sort  of  rough  labor  that  turned  up. 
He  corresponded  to  the  dock-walloper  of  our  own  sea 
ports  and  the  roustabouts  of  the  Mississippi  levees.  Not 


204  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

so  the  Japanese  who  have  poured  into  California.  These 
men  are  skilled  farmers  and  small  business  men. 
Strange  as  it  will  sound  to  most  of  you,  they  are  much 
more  like  our  Pilgrim  Fathers  than  they  are  like  the 
Chinamen  of  San  Francisco 's  early  days. 

They  have  left  their  native  land  to  carve  their  for 
tunes  where  opportunity  beckons.  They  are  eager  to 
get  a  solid  footing  in  their  new  home.  They  seek  to 
become  landowners  and  business  men.  They  do  not  come 
to  work  for  the  Americans  any  more  than  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  came  to  work  for  the  Indians.  The}?-  come  as 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers  did,  to  take  possession  of  the  coun 
try. 

Listen  to  George  Shima,  the  Potato  King,  said  to  be 
the  richest  Japanese  in  America. 

"I  am  a  farmer.  I  have  devoted  my  life  to  the  development 
of  the  delta  district  of  the  Sacramento  valley  and  I  know 
little  about  politics  or  diplomacy  or  international  questions. 

"We  Japanese  live  here.  We  have  cast  our  lot  with  Cali 
fornia.  We  are  drifting  farther  away  from  traditions  and 
ideas  of  our  native  country.  Our  sons  and  daughters  do  not 
know  them  at  all.  They  do  not  care  to  know  them.  They 
regard  America  as  their  home. 

"We  have  little  that  binds  us  to  Japan.  Our  interest  is 
here  and  our  fortune  is  wedded  to  this  state.  What  is  more 
important,  we  have  unconsciously  adapted  ourselves  to  the 
ideals  and  manners  and  customs  of  our  adopted  country,  and 
we  no  longer  entertain  the  slightest  desire  to  return  to  our 
native  country." 

Mr.  Shima  speaks  the  heart  of  thousands  of  his  immi 
grant  countrymen.  And  the  Easterner,  accustomed  to 
seeing  all  kinds  of  aliens  becoming  Americans,  not  only 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  205 

believes  the  Japanese  but  sympathizes  with  his  aspira 
tion.  Not  so  the  small  California  farmer.  To  him  this 
very  love  of  our  country  and  the  determination  to  merge 
one's  identity  in  it  threaten  him  with  a  competition  he 
has  already  proved  himself  unable  to  withstand. 

Many  Americans  east  of  the  Rockies  have  said :  * '  How 
foolish  to  oppose  the  Japanese  when  this  country  needs 
so  many  farm  laborers.  The  California  farmer  is  biting 
off  his  nose  to  spite  his  face  when  he  advocates  exclusion. 
If  he  shuts  out  the  Japanese  he  will  never  find  farm  la 
borers.  " 

To  which  we  must  reply  that  if  the  California  farmer 
does  not  shut  out  the  Japanese,  he  will  not  need  farm  la 
borers  much  longer.  For  the  Japanese  come  not  as  his 
laborers,  but  as  his  competitors.  The  State  board  report 
says: 

"The  Oriental  is  of  no  appreciable  value  as  a  farm  laborer 
to  the  American  farmer.  Very  few  of  them  .  .  .  are  in 
the  employ  of  American  farmers  as  purely  farm  help.  .  .  . 
The  Oriental  farm-laboring  class  is  valuable  principally  to 
land  speculators  or  developers  who  do  not  farm  their  own  lands, 
but  lease  them  upon  some  crop  basis  to  Orientals.  As  a  mat 
ter  of  fact  there  are  probably  more  white  laborers  working 
for  Oriental  farmers  than  there  are  Oriental  laborers  working 
for  American  farmers." 

Here  we  come  to  the  very  storm-center.  The  Ameri 
can  who  feels  the  " Yellow  Peril"  acutely  is  the  inde 
pendent  small  farmer, — the  man  with  one  or  two  hundred 
acres  off  which  he  seeks  to  get  a  living  and  small  compe 
tence  for  himself  and  his  children.  He  has,  let  us  say, 
been  growing  berries  or  sugar  beets  or  grapes  or  vege 
tables  on  his  place  for  many  years,  all  of  which  he  has 


206  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

been  selling  in  competition  with  other  Americans  whose 
standard  of  work  and  living  has  been  the  same  as  his  own 
or  nearly  so.  His  farming  neighbors  work  ten  or  twelve 
hours  a  day  at  the  most.  They  send  their  boys  and  girls 
to  school  for  the  greater  part  of  the  year  (and  please  re 
member  that  here  in  California  the  greater  part  of  the 
year  is  work-time  on  the  farm,  thanks  to  the  unusual 
climate).  Their  wives  work  around  the  house  and  per 
haps  attend  to  a  few  chickens,  but  rarely  toil  in  the 
fields  save  when  there  is  a  shortage  of  help  at  harvest 
time.  And  the  whole  family  takes  Sunday  off  whenever 
it  can. 

Into  a  community  of  such  people  there  cornes  a  keen 
and  thrifty  Japanese.  For  a  year  or  two  he  may  work 
around  as  a  farm  hand,  partly  for  the  sake  of  making 
money,  but  chiefly  in  order  to  discover  the  quality  and 
promise  of  the  soil  in  the  district.  Finally  he  rents  a 
piece  of  ground,  and  then  appear  wife  and  children,  and 
often,  too,  a  small  army  of  friends,  all  of  his  same  race. 
All  of  these  fall  to,  working  at  a  pace  which  bewilders 
and  horrifies  the  Americans  thereabouts.  Fourteen,  six 
teen,  and  even  eighteen  hours  in  the  fields  a  day  are 
schedules  frequently  observed  in  Japanese  communities. 
And  the  Japanese  are  not  visibly  injured  by  it.  They 
seem  to  be  a  stock  that  has  been  selected  through  cen 
turies  of  stern  competition  for  their  ability  to  stand  such 
a  strain. 

Now  it  is  evident  that  anybody  who  works  sixteen 
hours  a  day  over  a  crop  is  going  to  reap  a  much  larger 
harvest  than  the  man  who,  with  no  more  skill  than  the 
sixteen-hour  man,  toils  only  ten  hours.  The  Japanese 
new-comer  does  this,  and  often  more ;  for  he  is,  in  many 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  207 

instances,  much  more  deeply  versed  in  agriculture  than 
his  American  neighbor.  Furthermore,  the  yellow  stran 
ger  is  a  better  business  man  than  nine  out  of  ten  of  the 
small  farmers  of  American  stock.  He  understands  the 
art  of  cooperation,  which  we  are  only  beginning  to  learn. 
He  knows  how  to  force  his  rivals  out  by  underselling  for 
a  while  and  then,,  after  the  rivals  have  quit  in  disgust, 
working  his  prices  up  until  he  has  more  than  reimbursed 
himself  for  all  the  temporary  losses  incurred  in  squeezing 
these  hapless  victims  out. 

El  wood  Mead  has  found  striking  cases  of  this  very 
procedure  in  the  San  Joaquin  Valley  in  connection  with 
the  manipulation  of  land  rents  as  well  as  of  commodity 
prices.  And  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  this 
technic,  which  is  our  own  large  business  corporations' 
cherished  method,  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge 
among  the  Japanese. 

The  results  of  such  competition  can  be  clearly  read  all 
over  California.  For  the  statistics  we  need  not  go  to 
American  observers,  who  may  be  suspected  of  prejudice. 
We  have  luckily  at  hand  a  comprehensive  study  of  the 
expansion  of  Japanese  farmers  which  has  been  made  by 
one  of  their  own  countrymen,  one  Yamato  Ichihashi,  in 
structor  in  Japanese  history  and  economics  at  Leland 
Stanford  University.  In  1915  Mr.  Ichihashi  published  a 
volume  on  "Japanese  Immigration,"  in  which  he  pre 
sented  detailed  charts  that  brought  out  the  following  re 
markable  facts: 

Out  of  every  100  people  growing  berries  in  California, 
88  are  Japanese.  Out  of  every  100  who  raise  sugar  beets, 
67  are  Japanese.  Out  of  every  100  who  grow  grapes,  52 
are  Japanese.  Out  of  every  100  who  raise  vegetables 


208  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

(for  market,  of  course),  46  are  Japanese.  Out  of  every 
100  who  grow  citrous  fruits,  39  are  Japanese.  Out  of 
every  100  who  grow  deciduous  fruits,  36  are  Japanese. 

The  State  board,  in  commenting  upon  these  findings, 
holds  that  the  percentages  would  run  considerably  higher 
to-day. 

Rather  a  remarkable  showing  for  the  paltry  87,279 
Japanese  over  whom  California  is  said  to  have  a  "bad 
case  of  nerves,'7  is  it  not?  Particularly  when  you  pause 
to  consider  that  California's  fame  in  the  farming  lines 
rests  upon  her  berries,  her  lemons,  oranges,  and  grapes. 

We  must,  in  the  light  of  all  the  evidence,  admit  the 
proud  claims  of  Toyoji  Chiba,  managing  director  of  the 
Japanese  Agricultural  Association  in  California,  that  his 
countrymen  are,  from  the  point  of  view  of  sheer  efficiency 
and  endurance  and  cunning,  superior  to  many,  if  not  of 
most,  of  the  ordinary  white  farmers.  Certainly  anybody 
who  has  inspected  Japanese  farms  will  agree  with  the 
general  position,  if  not  of  the  detail,  of  Mr.  Chiba 's  fol 
lowing  remarks : 

"For  three  thousand  years,  the  Japanese  in  the  narrow  con 
fines  of  their  native  land  have  cultivated  the  soil  and  have 
made  it  produce  food  for  60,000,000  people,  a  surprising  fact 
of  deep  significance.  On  the  other  hand,  it  enables  one  to 
imagine  what  trouble  and  distress  they  have  undergone  in  order 
to  preserve  the  productivity  of  the  soil,  while  too,  the  fact 
that  to  the  Japanese  farmer  the  habit  of  valuing  and  taking 
care  of  the  land  has  become  second  nature  must  not  be  over 
looked.  We  believe  that  in  all  the  world  the  Japanese 
people  have  no  superiors  in  the  matter  of  producing  large 
crops  from  small  areas,  and  in  the  habitual  skill  with  which 
they  are  able  to  restore  the  productive  energy  of  the  soil.  We 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  209 

do  not  think  that  even  the  Danes,  who  have  world-wide  fame 
for  their  intensive  farming,  surpass  the  Japanese  in  this  re 
spect.  Look,  for  example,  at  the  illustrations  of  this  in  Cali 
fornia.  The  Japanese,  who  were  late  comers,  when  they  took 
up  farming  land,  had  to  settle  on  the  poorest  lands  in  Cali 
fornia,  as  can  be  easily  imagined  by  the  poorness  of  the  soil 
in  the  vicinity  of  Florin,  Livingston,  and  Bowles  near  Fresno, 
where  Japanese  farmers  are  peacefully  settled.  But  the  Jap 
anese  with  their  inherited  three  thousand  years'  experience  in 
restoring  the  energy  of  the  soil,  had  no  sooner  settled  there 
than,  like  King  Midas,  they  converted  these  regions  into  the 
best  farming  districts  of  California.  We  think  this  fact 
proves  the  above  statements  regarding  the  skill  of  Japanese  in 
the  treatment  of  land. 

"Examples  of  the  way  in  which  the  Japanese  farmers  are 
converting  abandoned  farms  into  excellent  ones  have  already 
been  written  up  frequently  by  American  investigators,  but 
we  wish  to  add  another  instance.  Eleven  years  ago,  a  Japa 
nese  farmer  at  Livingston  bought  from  an  Italian  or  Portu 
guese  farmer  who  had  become  weary  of  country  life  and  aban 
doned  it,  a  fifteen  acre  field  of  desolate  land  planted  with  old 
almond  and  fig  trees  which  had  almost  ceased  to  bear.  The 
Japanese  purchaser  had  become  fond  of  farming  and  desired 
to  establish  a  permanent  home  there.  This  industrious  settler 
bought  up  manure  from  a  nearby  town  and  spaded  it  into 
the  old  field.  While  others  irrigated  once,  he  irrigated  two  or 
three  times.  He  cultivated  the  fields  deeply  and  painstakingly 
over  and  over  again,  and  while  taking  measures  to  restore  the 
soil,  he  also  pruned  the  old  fruit  trees,  grafting  in  branches  of 
improved  varieties,  spraying  to  drive  out  injurious  insects 
three  or  four  times,  where  others  were  spraying  but  once,  and 
as  the  result  of  this  improved  culture,  there  is  probably  no 
fruit  farm  to  be  seen  in  California  which  compares  with  this 
one." 


210  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Some  competent  observers,  while  admitting  that  the 
Japanese  farmers  do  get  results,  attribute  their  high  suc 
cess  to  their  immense  effort  and  stick-to-itiveness  rather 
than  to  their  agricultural  wisdom.  Thus  the  Westfall- 
Lane  Company,  one  of  the  largest  melon-distributors  in 
the  State.  In  a  letter  to  the  State  Board  of  Control  on 
the  Japanese  in  the  Turlock  district,  where  this  company 
has  large  holdings  and  has  been  leasing  acreage  to  them 
and  financing  them,  Mr.  David  F.  Lane,  general  manager, 
says: 

"From  an  agricultural  standpoint,  it  is  necessary  for  us  to 
keep  a  man  in  the  field  to  see  that  these  Japanese  farm  their 
land  right.  This  may  seem  to  you  a  strange  statement,  con 
sidering  that  it  is  generally  assumed  that  the  Japs  are  such 
wonderful  farmers.  They  are  not  wonderful  farmers,  but 
hard  workers,  and  the  success  that  they  have  made,  in  my 
estimation,  is  principally  charged  up  or  credited  to  their  per 
sistent  plugging  and  consistent  attention  to  their  lands." 

Even  if  this  opinion  is  nearer  the  truth,  it  does  not 
alter  the  fact  that  Japanese  do  grow  more  crops  per  acre 
and  make  more  money  than  the  run  of  white  farmers 
with  whom  they  compete.  The  State  Board  of  Control 
itself  asserts  that  "any  sudden  removal  of  the  Japanese 
from  their  present  agricultural  pursuits  in  California 
would  affect  our  food  supply  very  seriously.  The  annual 
output  of  agricultural  products  by  Japanese  in  1919,  ap 
proximating  $67,000,000,  consists  of  food  products  prac 
tically  indispensable  to  the  state's  daily  supply.  The 
Japanese,  being  a  race  of  short  people,  seem  willing  to 
engage  in  those  lines  of  agricultural  work  which  call  for 
so-called  "squat  labor"  or  the  class  of  "stoop  and  pick 
labor." 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  211 

The  defenders  of  the  Japanese  immigrants  have  cor 
rectly  maintained  that  these  newcomers  have,  in  large 
measure,  gone  to  districts  where  living  and  working  con 
ditions  were  such  that  few  or  no  whites  would  settle. 
We  find  hundreds  of  Japanese  in  the  Imperial  Valley  and 
around  the  Delta  country  engaged  in  truck  gardening. 
These  are  the  two  richest  spots  in  all  California  and  the 
two  least  attractive  to  the  ordinary  American  of  North 
European  stock.  To  make  matters  worse,  the  most  prof 
itable  farming  there  is  just  that  sort  of  gardening  which 
requires  much  "  squat  labor. "  Cantaloupe  raising  is  a 
good  specimen  of  this,  and  so  is  tomato  growing.  The 
Eastern  backyard  amateur  who  reads  the  seductive  seed 
catalogues  may  have  difficulty  in  imagining  why  any 
white  man  should  object  to  planting,  weeding,  spraying 
and  harvesting  cantaloupes  or  tomatoes.  Let  him  know, 
though,  that  in  the  middle  of  the  day  the  marvelously 
rich  top  soil  of  these  highly  favored  regions  commonly 
attains  a  temperature  of  160  degrees  Fahrenheit  and 
occasionally  becomes  as  hot  as  a  desert  rock,  which  can. 
scarcely  be  touched  by  the  human  hand. 

Farmers  in  the  San  Joaquin  Valley  have  told  me  that 
similar  heat  often  occurs  there  too.  Naturally,  field 
workers  knock  off  during  these  mid-day  hours,  whenever 
possible.  But  even  the  early  and  late  hours  are  very 
hot,  for  in  these  shut-in  valleys  there  is  little  cooling  off 
over  night.  The  wonder  is  that  even  the  Japanese,  who 
are  not  well  adapted  to  tropical  life,  have  managed  to 
endure  gardening  work  there.  It  is  not  at  all  surpris 
ing  to  hear  reports  from  land  owners  in  the  Imperial 
Valley  indicating  that  many  Japanese  have  lately  been 


212  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

leaving  the  region,  giving  way  to  the  all-enduring  Mexi 
can  peon. 

THE   JAPANESE   FISHERIES 

The  same  process  of  " benevolent  assimilation"  is  going 
on  in  another  of  California's  major  industries,  namely, 
that  of  deep-sea  fishing.  Here  is  what  the  State  Board 
of  Control  finds,  and  here  too  are  some  of  the  questions 
which  those  findings  provoke : 

"It  is  very  significant  to  note  that  the  increase  in  Japanese 
fishermen  as  shown  above  from  the  license  year  1915-1916  to 
the  license  year  1919-1920  was  168%  or  825  persons,  while 
all  of  the  other  nationalities  combined  increased  but  2.07%,  or 
88  persons.  This  increase  in  the  number  of  Japanese  fisher 
men  is  confined  largely  to  southern  California  waters. 

"For  the  fishing  fleet,  operating  off  our  coast,  to  be  manned 
by  an  alien  people  involves  several  factors  vital  to  the  best  in 
terests  of  this  country,  amounting,  in  fact,  to  potential  dan 
gers. 

"(a)  Is  it  good  public  policy  at  any  time,  whether  in  peace 
or  in  war,  to  have  so  important  a  food  as  the  fish  industry 
monopolized  by  peoples  of  an  alien  race?  The  growth  of  the 
fish  industry  has  made  it  one  of  the  principal  sources  of  food 
supply  for  the  State. 

"(b)  The  fishing  boats  in  their  daily  and  constant  travels  in 
and  out  and  up  and  down  the  coast  acquire  an  intimate  knowl 
edge  of  coast  line,  harbors  and  defenses  which  is  not  only  ex 
ceedingly  valuable  if  used  for  the  benefit  of  the  country,  but 
would  be  extremely  dangerous  to  us  and  serviceable  to  an 
enemy  if  made  available  to  such  enemy  during  a  period  of  war. 

"(c)  The  experience  of  the  British,  in  particular,  during  the 
late  World  War  demonstrated  the  value  of  the  fishing  fleet 
for  patrol  duty  along  the  coast  line.  During  the  war,  the  fish 
ing  fleet  with  its  small  boats  scattered  along  the  entire  coast 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  213 

proved  exceedingly  valuable  in  reporting  the  approach  of 
enemy  boats  and  submarines.  In  the  case  of  California,  with 
a  fishing  fleet  manned  by  aliens,  especially  if  circumstances 
made  them  enemy  aliens,  we  would  not  only  lose  the  valuable 
services  of  these  boats  for  patrol  duty  during  a  time  of  war, 
but  these  same  boats  might  become  a  powerful  aid  to  the 
enemy. 

"(d)  This  fishing  fleet  provides  a  convenient  means  for 
illegal  entry  into  the  State.  The  following  language  appears 
on  page  409  of  the  1919  report  of  the  United  States  Commis 
sioner  of  Immigration:  'Numbers  of  Japanese  fishing  boats 
on  the  Pacific  Coast,  operating  in  Mexican  waters,  are  em 
ployed  to  facilitate  the  illegal  entry  of  Japanese  laborers/  " 

Here  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  wider  significance 
of  these  facts.  But  it  should  be  stated  emphatically  that 
when  all  the  factors  in  the  American-Japanese  situation 
have  been  weighed,  the  menace  of  this  Japanese  fishing 
fleet  proves  to  be  a  mere  bogey.  We  have  already  seen 
that  the  Japanese  do  not  and  cannot  seriously  entertain 
the  thought  of  attacking  our  Pacific  Coast. 

JAPANESE   SEGREGATION   AND   CLANNISHNESS 

It  need  hardly  be  said  that,  as  a  consequence  of  the 
great  differences  in  language  and  culture  between  our 
people  and  the  Japanese  immigrants,  the  latter  could  not 
scatter  among  our  white  population  even  if  they  chose 
to.  It  would  be  poor  business  for  them,  just  as  it  would 
be  for  a  thousand  Americans  who  knew  no  Russian  and 
were  bent  on  making  their  living  to  scatter  themselves 
through  Siberia.  In  union  there  is  strength,  and  comfort 
as  well. 

Over  and  above  this  natural  impulse  to  stick  together, 


214 


MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 


there  is  another  force  at  work  in  the  case  of  the  Japa 
nese.  Our  laws  deny  them  the  privilege  of  citizenship, 
and  yet  allow  them  to  come  to  work  here  under  the  ' '  Gen 
tlemen 's  Agreement"  now  in  force.  The  laws  of  Japan, 
to  which  they  owe  allegiance,  not  by  choice  so  much  as 


San  Francisco 


The  dotted  line  in  the  above  outline  map  indicates  the  valleys 
of  the  Sacramento  and  the  San  Joaquin.  The  area  enclosed  is 
approximately  the  total  of  agricultural  California,  less  than  one- 
tenth  of  which  falls  outside  of  this  valley  district. 


215 


I 


216 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  217 

by  necessity,  require  them  to  form  associations  which  are 
under  the  surveillance  of  Japanese  consuls  or  other  offi 
cials;  and  it  is  of  course  to  Japan  that  they  must  look 
for  protection  and  aid.  Obviously,  then,  they  have  every 
good  reason  to  concentrate  in  communities  of  their  own. 
And  this  they  are  doing  all  over  California. 

The  recent  exhaustive  surveys  by  the  State  Board  of 
Control  bring  this  tendency  out  with  great  clearness. 
We  here  reproduce  three  maps  prepared  by  the  board, 
the  first  designating  the  five  chief  Oriental  districts  of 
the  State,  the  second  presenting  in  full  detail  the  land- 
holdings  of  the  Japanese  in  the  richest  part  of  the  Great 
Valley,  and  the  third  showing  similar  holdings  in  the 
wonderfully  fertile  Imperial  Valley,  on  the  Mexican  bor 
der.  In  studying  these  maps,  you  must  keep  in  mind 
the  several  primary  facts  about  the  geography  and  agri 
culture  of  California.  Note  particularly  the  following: 

1.  It  is  generally  conceded  that  the  Japanese  farmer, 
by  his  long  training  in  intensive  agriculture,  especially 
in  truck  gardening  and  the  growing  of  small  fruits,  can 
surpass  and  hence  drive  out  the  white  farmer. 

2.  In  other  branches  of  agriculture,  however,  the  Jap 
anese  has  no  marked  superiority.     It  is  only  in  lines  of 
farming  where  the  yield  and  profit  per  acre  depend 
largely  on  the  amount  of  hand  labor  and  the  length  of 
the  day's  work  that  he  vanquishes  all  competitors. 

3.  California  is  composed  chiefly  of  mountains,  high 
mountain  valleys,  and  minor  plateaus.     Roughly  speak 
ing,  not  more  than  one-sixth  of  the  State  can  ever  be 
developed  intensively,  and  much  of  this  one-sixth  can 
not  profitably  be  so  handled  until  the  population  there 
becomes  very  dense,  which  will  not  happen  for  many 


218  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

generations  to  come.  Of  the  other  five-sixths  of  the 
State,  much  more  than  half  is  forever  uninhabitable. 
Lofty  mountains,  blazing  deserts,  interior  valleys  which 
must  remain  forever  waterless;  and  in  the  north  other 
mountains  thick  with  giant  timber.  This  is  the  greater 
part  of  California. 

When  we  are  thinking  about  the  human  problems  such 
as  those  involved  in  the  Japanese  issue,  we  must  imagine 
California  to  be  about  one-sixth  of  her  actual  size. 

4.  Of  this  rich  one-sixth,  the  great  bulk  lies  in  one 
unbroken  level  plain  which  extends  down  from  the  upper 
reaches  of  the  Sacramento  River,  in  the  north,  to  the 
head  waters  of  the  San  Joaquin  River,  roughly  a  hun 
dred  miles  north  of  Los  Angeles.     A  relatively  small 
tract  lies  in  the  Imperial  Valley,  in  the  extreme  south 
east,  adjoining  Mexico.     The  remaining  potential  garden- 
land  is  scattered  throughout  most  of  the  State  except  the 
extreme  north  and  the  eastern   half.     While  some   of 
these  areas  would  be  regarded  as  large  in  our  Eastern 
States,  they  are  mere  dots  on  the  map  of  California. 

5.  It  is  in  the  fertile  one-sixth  of  the  State  that  the 
Japanese  have  concentrated. 

6.  Less  than  one-third  of  the  white  population  of  the 
State  lives  in  this  same  fertile  region.     Thus,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  community  life  and  economic  develop 
ment,  the  effective  proportion  of  Japanese  to  whites  is 
much  greater  than  the  general  statistics  for  the  State  at 
large  would  indicate. 

7.  In  the  entire  State  to-day  there  are  3,893,500  acres 
under  irrigation,  and  irrigation  is  indispensable  every 
where    in    California.     These    irrigated   tracts    are,    of 
course,  the  richest,  and  of  them  the  Orientals  have  col- 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  219 

onized  and  now  occupy  623,752  acres,  of  which  458,056 
are  occupied  by  Japanese. 

The  situation  is  still  further  aggravated  by  the  un 
usually  bad  distribution  of  population  throughout  the 
State.  With  a  total  of  3,426,536  inhabitants,  a  very 
small  number  for  the  size  of  the  State,  fully  two-thirds 
of  these  live  in  the  metropolitan  areas  of  the  three  chief 
cities.  The  new  census  shows  a  full  million  people  in  San 
Francisco  and  its  suburbs,  nearly  a  million  in  and  around 
Los  Angeles,  and  close  to  125,000  in  and  around  San 
Diego.  Were  it  possible  to  check  off  the  miners,  the 
lumbermen  of  the  North,  the  transient  Mexican  laborers, 
and  the  very  large  leisure  class  of  well-to-do  retired  East 
erners  who  live  outside  of  the  three  urban  zones  just 
named,  and  who  do  not  count  in  either  the  economic  or 
social  development  of  rural  California,  the  total  of  those 
whose  lives  and  fortunes  are  bound  up  in  the  wholesome 
upbuilding  of  rural  life  in  California  would  turn  out  to 
be  considerably  smaller,  probably  much  less  than  one 
million. 

We  must  begin  to  see  that  on  the  economic  and  social 
side  of  the  issue  the  Californians  themselves  have  not 
made  out  as  strong  a  case  against  the  Japanese  "  in 
vasion"  as  the  facts  warrant.  They  have  been  loath  to 
admit  what  they  and  everybody  else  knows  to  be  a  fact ; 
namely,  that  the  real  California  is  essentially  not  a 
seaside  playground,  but  a  farming  State,  and  always  must 
be;  and  that  an  abnormally  large  part  of  its  people  do 
not  live  in  the  farming  regions  and  have  no  genuine  in 
terest  in  its  development  and  hence  will  not  influence  or 
be  influenced  by  what  happens  in  the  Great  Valley,  Im 
perial,  and  other  agrarian  districts. 


220  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

The  motion-picture  stars  and  camera-men  of  the  South 
do  not  plow  the  ground.  The  army  of  ex-farm  hands 
and  ex-villagers  from  Iowa  and  Illinois  who  haunt  the 
cafeterias  of  Los  Angeles  have  put  agriculture  forever 
out  of  their  minds.  The  people  from  Boston  and  Phila 
delphia  who  inhabit  the  beautiful  shore  homes  from 
Monterey  to  San  Diego  cannot  be  expected  to  wony  over 
the  troubles  of  the  rice-grower  of  the  Sacramento  Valley 
and  the  melon-farmer  of  Turlock.  Most  of  them  come  to 
California  late  in  life  to  enjoy  their  last  years  in  the  sun 
and  flowers  and  scenery  of  this  wonderful  region.  No 
Japanese  distress  them  by  their  presence  or  competition ; 
so,  human  nature  being  what  it  is,  their  interest  in  the 
local  social  and  business  issues  of  farmers  one  or  two  hun 
dred  miles  away  must  be  decidedly  academic. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  social  and  economic  struggle  is 
really  between  some  800,000  whites  thinly  scattered  over 
a  region  smaller  than  New  York  State  and  compact 
groups  of  Japanese  officially  numbering  87,279,  but 
surely  more  in  reality.  The  whites,  while  they  practise 
cooperation  much  more  extensively  than  most  American 
farmers  do,  in  fact,  still  lag  far  behind  the  Japanese. 
We  have  heard  of  no  case  in  which  groups  of  California 
whites  do  more  than  cooperate  in  buying  farm  supplies 
and  farm  products.  But  the  Japanese  do  much  more. 
Their  clannishness  is  a  very  real  business  force.  It  pays 
dividends.  Listen  to  Mr.  David  R.  Lane,  the  Turlock 
melon-grower,  on  this : 

"The  Japanese  are  cooperative.  They  usually  practice  this 
cooperativeness  in  what  we  term  at  this  time  as  a  'clan.' 
These  clans  are  made  up  of  from  five  to  twenty  people. 

"These  clans  pool  their  interests.     For  example :  if  one  man 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  221 

loses,  the  others  help  him  out;  they  go  so  far  as  endorsing 
each  other's  notes  on  advances  made  or  for  leases  to  be  paid. 

"During  the  attention  that  I  have  given  to  these  people,  I 
find  that  these  clans  are  transported  clans  from  Japan.  That 
is  to  say,  Japanese  living  and  operating  in  provinces  in  Japan 
clique  together  in  the  nited  States  and  cooperate  in  their 
agricultural  ventures.  They  go  so  far  that  a  leader  of  a  clan, 
or  his  heirs  in  Japan,  inherits  the  same  right  when  the  mem 
bers  are  transported  in  this  country. 

"This  is  usually  what  'he'  means  when  he  refers  to  'my 
friend.'  When  a  Jap  succeeds  in  a  venture,  he  stakes  his 
friend  to  lease  a  piece  of  the  property  and  he  becomes  the 
next  unit  to  their  cooperative  system.  This  friend  is  picked 
from  their  working  classes,  that  is,  a  laboring  man.  He  has 
worked  with  him  in  the  cantaloupe  field  or  has  some  agricul 
tural  experience.  They  also  cooperate  in  helping  one  another 
to  plow  and  to  do  all  kinds  of  agricultural  work.  Especially 
is  this  true  if  one  of  their  number  is  behind  with  his  work. 

"All  this  sounds  very  lovable  and  brotherly,  but  these  people 
have  their  difficulties.  If  a  Jap  attempts  to  lease  more  land 
than  he  is  able  to  handle,  he  is  notified  by  them  to  cut  some 
of  the  land  out  of  his  holdings  and  get  down  to  a  basis  where 
he  can  handle  it  economically.  If  he  neglects  the  land,  jeop 
ardizing  the  financial  responsibilities  of  the  others,  he  is  cor 
rected,  but,  let  me  say  at  this  time,  very  diplomatically.  If 
he  does  not  take  care  of  his  land,  the  others  go  in  on  the  prop 
erty,  combining  their  efforts  to  get  the  land  up  to  the  proper 
condition  as  speedily  as  possible." 

This  is  a  degree  of  shrewdness  and  team  work  which 
we  Americans  have  yet  to  learn.  With  us  it  must  come 
as  a  matter  of  slow  progress.  With  the  Japanese,  it  is 
not  progress;  it  is  merely  the  survival  of  the  old  clan 
customs  that  grew  up  untold  centuries  ago  in  Japan. 
It  happens  to  be  a  most  useful  survival  when  trans- 


222  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

ferred  to  a  land  where  even  yet  every  white  man  has  to 
shift  for  himself,  and  "the  devil  take  the  hindmost." 

What,  we  may  wonder,  would  happen  if  a  few  million 
men  and  women  dominated  by  this  most  effective  clan 
spirit  were  to  settle  in  the  midst  of  us  Americans?  To 
visualize  the  trend,  take  a  particular  group  of  young 
people  such  as  the  pupils  of  the  grammar  school  at 
Florin,  Sacramento  County,  divided  into  two  nearly 
equal  race  groups,  Americans  and  Japanese.  Count 
heads,  weigh  the  minds,  then  look  into  the  future ! 

Trained  in  the  idea  of  "personal  liberty"  and  resent 
ing  authority,  these  American  boys  and  girls  will  grow 
up  with  free  spirits,  and  go  their  various  ways  in  life. 
Some  will  attend  the  Methodist  Church  and  join  the  car 
penters'  union.  Others  will  become  Mormons  and  drift 
off  to  the  San  Francisco  Bay  ship-yards.  Still  others 
will  go  into  politics  and  eventually  get  jobs  in  Washing 
ton,  perhaps.  Twenty  years  from  now  they  will  have 
forgotten  one  another,  and  will  be  scattered  in  half  a 
hundred  trades  and  towns.  But  how  about  the  Japanese 
children? 

Before  or  after  the  day's  work  at  this  public  school, 
most  of  them  have  to  attend  a  Japanese  school.  Here 
they  are  taught  the  Japanese  language  and  the  history 
and  ideals  of  Japan.  They  learn  the  edicts,  in  which 
the  mikado  is  exalted  as  God's  local  manager.  During 
vacation  these  children  work  in  the  fields  with  their 
parents,  sometimes  from  ten  to  fourteen  hours  a  day. 
And  when  they  grow  up,  they  are  taken  into  the  clan, 
given  an  interest  in  the  business,  whatever  that  may  hap 
pen  to  be,  and  from  thenceforth  their  lives  are  effectively 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  223 

regulated  by  the  group.  They  will  do  what  the  group 
deems  best.  If  they  lose,  the  group  will  make  up  the 
losses.  If  they  make  much  money,  the  whole  group  bene 
fits  thereby. 

So,  twenty  years  hence,  all  the  Japanese  survivors  of 
this  group  of  eighty  children  of  Florin  will  be  prosperous 
members  of  a  clan,  and  happy  to  be  such.  But  of  the 
American  group,  most  will  be  struggling  along  "on  their 
own,"  while  some  will  certainly  be  poor,  and  a  few  rich. 
The  struggling  and  the  poor  will  be  discouraged  and  per 
haps  disgruntled.  And  it  would  not  be  at  all  strange  if 
some  of  them  were  to  wish  they  had  been  born  in  Japa 
nese  families. 

In  this  prospect,  not  at  all  an  improbable  one,  by  the 
way,  we  see  the  possibilities  of  shattered  morale  and 
social  disturbances  much  graver  than  those  brought  about 
by  the  differences  between  whites  and  blacks.  The  negro 
at  his  best  is  still  mentally  and  morally  weaker  than  the 
white.  He  cannot  present  a  solid  front  against  white 
critics  and  white  attackers,  and,  above  all,  he  is  totally 
lacking  in  cunning.  The  white  who  chooses  to  do  so  can 
out -bully  him  and  outmanoeuver  him  with  contemptuous 
ease.  But  not  so  with  the  Japanese.  It  is  quite  possible 
that,  if  matters  came  to  a  head,  these  people  would,  with 
their  age-old  instincts  and  habits  of  perfect  team  work 
and  utter  fearlessness,  stagger  white  humanity  precisely 
as  they  staggered  the  Russians  around  Mukden  and  Port 
Arthur  when  first  their  blood  brothers  proved  themselves 
the  military  equals  of  Europe  and  burst  into  the  arena 
of  world  power.  // 


224  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

THE   JAPANESE  BIRTH-RATE 

It  is  a  well-established  fact  that  any  group,  shifting 
from  a  densely  populated  region  where  living  conditions 
are  hard  to  a  new  and  sparsely  peopled  land  where  they 
find  it  much  easier  to  win  bread,  brings  many  children 
into  the  world.  This  fact,  which  will  be  discussed  at 
length  in  a  later  chapter,  has  been  richly  confirmed  in 
California. 

The  Japanese  there  to-day  are  outbreeding  the  Amer 
icans  at  the  startling  rate  of  three  to  one.  In  1910  there 
were  in  the  State  313,280  married  white  women,  who  in 
the  same  year  gave  birth  to  30,893  children.  This  is  a 
birth-rate  of  9.9  per  cent,  or  virtually  one  child  to  every 
ten  married  women.  In  1919  there  were  15,211  Japanese 
women  there,  nineteen  years  of  age  or  older;  and  this 
group  gave  birth  to  4,378  children  in  the  year.  This 
is  a  birth-rate  of  28.8  per  cent,  not  far  from  being  one 
child  to  every  three  women. 

An  even  more  striking  comparison  has  been  brought 
out  by  the  State  Board  of  Control.  In  1910  there  was 
only  one  Japanese  child  to  every  forty-three  white  chil 
dren  born  in  California,  but  in  1919  there  was  one  to 
every  twelve.  In  the  eighteen  farming  counties  where 
the  Japanese  have  been  concentrating,  the  number  of 
Japanese  births  has  multiplied  almost  exactly  four  times 
during  the  last  decade;  and  in  the  most  densely  settled 
Japanese  districts,  such  as  the  rural  regions  of  Sacra 
mento  County,  49.7  per  cent,  or  virtually  one  half  of  all 
births  were  Japanese  in  the  year  1919. 

Some  Californians  have  exaggerated  the  significance 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  225 

of  this.  They  have  assumed  that  this  high  birth-rate  will 
continue  indefinitely.  All  evidence  from  other  migra 
tions,  however,  points  to  the  conclusion  that  the  rate 
will  slowly  decline  as  the  group  prospers  and  grows. 
It  must  be  admitted,  though,  that  just  as  in  the  case  of 
the  European  Catholics,  such  as  the  Irish,  the  Italians, 
and  the  Poles,  so  with  the  Japanese:  the  influence  of  the 
priests  and  the  religious  faith  work  powerfully  to  keep 
up  the  birth-rate.  Many  students  of  Japanese  culture 
have  commented  upon  the  sincere  belief  of  the  ordinary 
Japanese  that  it  is  his  religious  duty  to  maintain  and  in 
crease  the  splendor  and  power  of  the  mikado  and  his 
people  by  bringing  as  many  children  into  being  as  pos 
sible.  Where  this  idea  is  active,  the  decline  of  the  birth 
rate  through  material  prosperity  must  be  considerably 
checked. 

"We  may,  therefore,  expect  from  the  Japanese  some 
slight  drop  in  births  over  a  fairly  long  period,  but  not  a 
decline  equal  to  that  which  we  find  in  the  profoundly  ir 
religious  stocks,  who,  like  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the 
French,  order  their  family  life  according  to  their  personal 
wishes. 

It  is  certain  that,  in  any  event,  the  Japanese  popula 
tion  here  will  double  every  thirty  years  or  thereabouts 
so  long  as  the  Japanese  villages  preserve  their  social  in 
tegrity  and  their  religious  views.  Thus  by  1950,  Cali 
fornia  will  have  about  200,000  Japanese  and,  by  1980, 
about  400,000  if  nothing  is  done  to  change  the  present 
situation  beyond  checking  further  Japanese  immigration 
altogether.  This,  too,  without  our  reckoning  on  the 
110,000  Japanese  in  Hawaii,  whose  American-born  chil- 


226  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

dren  long  before  1950  will  be  streaming  into  the  Pacific 
coast  country  in  search  of  opportunities  that  the  tiny 
islands  of  their  birth  cannot  offer. 

Mr.  Warren  S.  Thompson  has  computed  for  us  the 
probable  growth  of  Japanese  colonies  in  California  for 
the  next  40  years.  He  proceeds  on  three  different  as 
sumptions.  If  Japanese  immigration  be  excluded  hence 
forth,  in  1960  the  population  will  have  grown  to  228,279. 
If,  secondly,  the  number  of  Japanese  immigrants  enter 
ing  California  remains  the  same  for  each  decade  as  it  was 
during  the  decade  from  1910-1920,  in  1960  there  will  be 
372,647  Japanese  in  California.  Lastly,  if  the  number 
of  immigrants  entering  California  during  each  of  these 
decades  bears  the  same  ratio  to  the  total  Japanese  popu 
lation  in  California  at  the  beginning  of  each  decade  as  it 
did  during  the  decade  1910-1920,  by  1960  there  will  be 
1,116,279  Japanese  in  California. 

The  details  of  Mr.  Thompson's  estimates  will  be  found 
in  the  Appendix. 

Before  letting  this  affect  our  final  judgment,  we  must 
note  that  if  the  white  population  of  California  continues 
to  grow  at  the  same  rate  that  it  has  for  the  last  sixty 
years,  it  will  touch  ten  million  in  1950  and  thirty  million 
in  1980.  Such  an  increase  is  quite  impossible,  however. 
Many  forces  tend  to  reduce  it  greatly. 

One  of  them  is  the  tremendous  set-back  American 
agriculture  has  received  during  the  past  year,  as  a  result 
of  incompetent  agrarian  legislation  and  the  failure  to 
establish  foreign  credits  which  might  sustain  the  export 
market  for  farm  products.  Another  force  is  the  cer 
tainty  that,  after  the  present  depression,  industrialism 
will  revive  much  more  promptly  than  agriculture,  by 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  227 

virtue  of  its  superior  organization,  its  more  intelligent 
leadership,  and  its  power  over  the  banks ;  and  hence  that 
the  movement  of  farm  workers  toward  the  cities,  which 
has  been  steadily  increasing-  for  a  full  generation,  will 
continue  unabated.  A  third  influence  is  the  probable 
reduction  of  European  immigration  at  least  for  a  few 
years  to  come.  And  a  fourth  is  the  natural  operation  of 
the  law  of  diminishing  returns  in  farming,  which  must 
before  long  be  accelerated  by  the  peculiar  difficulties  in 
getting  water  for  irrigation  throughout  the  richest  sec 
tions  of  California. 

The  first  three  of  these  forces  are  more  or  less  familiar 
to  every  reader  who  follows  the  news  of  the  day.  The 
last  is  not  generally  understood  and  calls  for  comment. 

The  ordinary  American  thinks  of  water  in  terms  of 
household  use.  On  this  basis  of  measurement,  California 
has  plenty  of  water  for  millions  of  kitchens  and  bath 
rooms.  But  in  a  region  of  very  low  rainfall,  we  must 
first  think  of  water  for  irrigation.  And  it  requires  little 
imagination  to  realize  that  a  hundred-acre  field  of  pota 
toes  or  carrots  must  drink  up  a  thousand  gallons  of  water 
for  every  one  which  the  farmer  and  his  folks  use  in  cups 
and  wash  basins.  Now,  with  her  supply  of  irrigation 
water,  California  is  already  living  much  closer  to  the 
margin  of  existence  than  the  natives  like  to  admit.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  the  territory  south  of  Los  Angeles  can 
maintain  much  more  than  double  its  present  population, 
with  its  very  low  rainfall,  and  total  lack  of  rivers  and 
lakes.  Already  the  water  shortage  in  central  California 
is  so  grave  that,  as  a  result  of  three  years  of  subnormal 
rainfall,  the  authorities  have  been  compelled  to  forbid 
the  use  of  electricity  for  advertising  display  through  the 


228  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

summer  and  autumn  of  1920,  and  San  Francisco  and 
other  cities  have  greatly  curtailed  their  street  lighting. 
And  many  rice  growers  in  the  Sacramento  Valley  have 
been  in  trouble.- 

Were  the  bulk  of  the  next  2,000,000  new-comers  in 
California  to  enter  the  farming  districts  and  hence  use 
immense  quantities  of  water  for  irrigating,  the  ingenuity 
of  the  state  engineers  would  be  taxed  to  find  the  requisite 
flow.  Beyond  all  doubt,  then,  the  law  of  diminishing  re 
turns  in  agriculture  will  be  accelerated  considerably  in 
its  application  all  over  the  State.  And  this  cannot  fail 
to  react  adversely  upon  the  growth  of  population  at  no 
distant  date. 

California  land  boomers,  to  be  sure,  will  tell  you  that 
the  State  can  support  sixty  or  seventy  million  people  in 
comfort.  But  all  such  amateur  statistics  are  preposter 
ous.  And  even  the  optimistic  agricultural  experts  on  the 
Coast  laugh  at  them.  Add  only  two  or  three  more  mil 
lions  to  the  farming  sections,  and  the  cost  of  water  will 
rise  to  a  point  where  it  makes  serious  inroads  on  the 
profits  from  all  crops  save  the  few  that  show  the  largest 
net  returns,  such  as  fancy  oranges,  fancy  prunes,  and  the 
like.  Thereafter  the  only  way  in  which  most  farming 
can  be  made  to  pay  will  be  by  lengthening  the  farmer's 
day  and  trimming  his  workers'  wages.  And  that  has 
tens  the  land  downward  toward  the  Asiatic  standard  of 
living,  against  which  it  is  now  up  in  arms. 

Now,  this  tendency  would  work  to  the  advantage  of  the 
Japanese  or  any  other  race  with  a  low  standard  of  living. 
For  it  will  be  the  white  farmer  who  will  drop  out  of  the 
game  first,  as  profits  and  comforts  dwindle  as  a  result 
of  water  shortage  and  its  attendant  hardships.  The  Asi- 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  229 

atic,  accustomed  to  harder  work,  longer  hours,  and  a 
smaller  return  per  unit  of  labor,  would  therefore  outlive 
the  American  under  such  conditions. 

Here  is  the  paradox  then:  The  more  white  people  in 
California,  the  easier  it  will  be  for  the  Japanese  to  win 
in  competition. 

Many  Americans  will  laugh  at  this,  but  some  day  they 
will  change  their  tune ;  for  the  paradox  is  an  inexorable 
result  of  a  fundamental  law  of  economics  working  in  a 
region  where  a  high  and  a  low  standard  of  living  come 
into  conflict.  Its  beginnings  are  already  visible. 

JAPANESE  VIRTUES   AND   DEFECTS 

Many  Americans  east  of  the  Rockies  suppose  that  the 
Californian  feels  toward  the  Japanese  pretty  much  as  his 
fathers  did  toward  the  Chinese  who  came  in  on  the  tail 
of  the  gold  rush.  They  suppose  that  he  regards  the  new 
comer  as  dirty,  knavish,  superstitious,  and  altogether  in 
ferior  to  the  noble  white  man.  This  view,  which  has 
recently  been  accepted  by  "The  Nation"  and  some  other 
papers,  has  not  the  slightest  foundation  in  fact.  Inter 
views  with  farmers  and  business  men  from  the  Japanese 
districts  of  California  reveal  the  very  opposite  opinion, 
and  so  wide-spread  is  this  opposite  opinion  that  nearly 
all  newspapers  of  the  State  have  repeatedly  expressed  it 
in  the  clearest  language.  It  is  no  suave  diplomatic 
camouflage  which  Governor  Stephens  indulges  in  when 
he  says,  in  a  letter  to  Secretary  of  State  Colby : 

"It  is  also  proper  to  state  that  I  believe  I  speak  the  feelings 
of  our  people  when  I  express  to  you  a  full  recognition  of  the 
many  admirable  qualities  of  the  Japanese  people.  We  assume 
no  arrogant  superiority  or  race  or  culture  over  them.  Their 


230  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

art,  their  literature,  their  philosophy,  and  in  recent  years, 
their  scientific  attainments  have  gained  for  them  a  respect 
from  the  white  peoples  in  which  we,  who  know  them  so  well, 
fully  share.  We  have  learned  to  admire  the  brilliancy  of  their 
art  and  the  genius  that  these  people  display.  We  respect  their 
deep  philosophy  which  flows  so  placidly  out  of  that  wonder 
ful  past  of  theirs  and  which  has  come  down  through  ages  that 
antedate  our  Christian  era.  We  join  with  the  entire  civilized 
world  in  our  admiration  of  the  tremendous  strides  which  the 
Japanese  nation  has  made  in  the  last  two  generations,  unpar 
alleled  as  its  careers  is  in  the  history  of  nations.  We  respect 
the  right  of  the  Japanese  to  their  true  development  and  to  the 
attainment  of  their  destiny." 

This  truly  represents  the  sentiment  of  everybody  in 
California  except  the  blatherskites,  who,  while  unpleas 
antly  numerous  in  San  Francisco  and  Sacramento,  are 
still  a  negligible  fraction  of  the  citizenry. 

The  truth  is  that  for  the  first  time  in  American  his 
tory  we  find  here  the  virtues  of  immigrants  being  largely 
responsible  for  the  feeling  against  their  presence  in  our 
land.  Here  are  a  few  facts  of  common  knowledge 
in  California  that  contribute  to  this  anomalous  situa 
tion. 

The  Japanese  is  not  "cheap  labor."  The  Chinese 
coolie  used  to  work  for  anything  he  could  get,  from  fifty 
cents  a  day  up.  But  does  the  Japanese  follow  suit? 
Far  from  it.  He  is  too  shrewd  and  too  progressive.  He 
exacts  "all  the  traffic  will  bear"  in  the  most  thoroughly 
Yankee  fashion.  The  prevailing  rate  of  wages  which  the 
•common  Japanese  farm  hand  was  getting  last  year  was 
$4.50  per  day.  In  the  cities  Japanese  cooks,  waiters, 
valets,  barbers  and  other  similar  workers  ask  as  much  as 
or  even  more  than  their  white  competitors.  The  valets 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  231 

notably  can  command  considerably  more  than  most 
whites,  thanks  to  their  gentle  manners,  their  thorough 
ness,  and  their  lack  of  resentment  toward  long  and  ir 
regular  hours. 

In  matters  of  personal  cleanliness  the  Japanese  is  im 
measurably  superior  to  the  Chinese  coolie  and  consider 
ably  above  the  Russian  Jews,  Italians,  Slovaks,  Irish  and 
other  European  stocks.  This  is  one  of  the  first  things  to 
strike  the  Eastern  observer  who  is  familiar  with  the  for 
eign  settlements  in  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  other 
Atlantic  centers.  But,  like  these  aliens,  the  Japanese 
finds  himself,  as  a  poor  and  unestablished  new-comer, 
compelled  to  inhabit  dwellings  and  neighborhoods  of  the 
lowest  types  until  he  can  save  money  enough  to  seek  more 
congenial  quarters. 

This  appears  clearly  in  the  report  made  to  the  State 
Board  of  Control  by  Edward  A.  Brown,  chief  sanitary 
engineer  of  the  California  State  Commission  on  Immi 
gration  and  Housing.  Speaking  first  of  the  farm  labor 
camps  out  in  the  country  districts,  he  says : 

"One  very  noticeable  feature  in  a  Japanese  labor  camp  where 
both  American  and  Japanese  laborers  are  employed  is  that  the 
quarters  provided  for  Japanes^are  generally  much  better  than 
those  provided  for  Americans.y 

"At  every  camp  where  Japanese  are  employed,  a  bath  is  pro 
vided  (Japanese  type).  The  Japanese  are  very  clean  about 
their  persons,  not  so  much  about  the  living  quarters;  open 
toilets,  open  drains  from  the  kitchen  sink,  unscreened  dining 
and  cooking  quarters  and  living  quarters  generally  littered  with 
boxes,  bags,  etc.  Their  sleeping  quarters  are,  as  a  rule,  a 
platform  built  the  length  of  the  structure  and  the  bunks  closed 
in  by  boards  or  burlap,  a  small  opening  being  left  in  the  wall, 
which  has  a  sliding  board.  Camp  inspectors  order  the  re- 


232  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

xnoval  of  all  such  enclosures  and  insist  that  light  and  fresh 
air  be  admitted  into  the  sleeping  quarters. 

"In  the  cities,  the  Japanese  select  some  district  to  live 
in.  Frequently  it  is  a  district  where  the  former  residents 
have  been  outlawed.  From  the  first,  they  start  to  move  into 
the  better  parts  of  the  cities.  A  Japanese  quarter  in  any 
city  of  California  will  show  the  same  conditions — houses 
crowded,  ill  smelling,  cluttered  up  with  various  foodstuffs, 
a  store  in  front  and  living  quarters  in  the  rear.  Near  Santa 
Monica  in  Los  Angeles  County,  is  a  Japanese  fishing  village 
which  I  had  occasion  to  investigate.  Shack  houses,  each  a 
fish  drying  place,  open  toilets,  open  sewers,  and  a  stench  that 
made  the  salt  air  from  the  ocean  negligible,  was  the  condition 
that  I  found.  I  merely  use  this  as  an  example  of  what  the 
usual  conditions  are  where  Japanese  live. 

"The  Japanese  hotels  and  boarding  houses  in  Sacramento  are, 
for  the  most  part,  poor.  They  are  old  buildings,  usually  with 
out  heat  in  the  rooms  and  occasionally  with  no  bathroom  in  the 
building.  There  usually  is  a  toilet  to  each  floor.  There  are 
poor  accommodations  for  visiting  Japanese,  there  being  no 
first-class  hotel. 

"In  the  rural  districts,  conditions  are  crowded,  but  they  at 
least  have  bathing  facilities  where  the  Japanese  bathe  almost 
daily  when  they  have  the  opportunity.  In  the  rice  growing 
districts,  I  notice  that  the  Japanese  provide  good  accommoda 
tions  for  their  own  people,  putting  up  more  or  less  permanent 
houses  with  bathing  facilities,  etc.  In  the  fruit  growing  dis 
tricts  along  the  Sacramento  River  and  elsewhere,  as  well  as  in 
the  vegetable  growing  districts  on  the  islands,  conditions  are 
not  so  good.  They  usually  have  some  old  cabin  or  cabins 
which  have  been  on  the  place  for  years  and  which  are  very 
often  in  a  filthy  condition.  The  Japanese  farmer  usually  feeds 
his  help  at  his  own  table  and  during  the  busy  season  their  eat 
ing  quarters  are  exceedingly  crowded.  As  the  Secretary  of  the 
Japanese  Association  of  the  Sacramento  Valley  put  it,  'On 


JAPANESE  IN  CALIFORNIA  233 

account  of  short  leases  the  Japanese  are  able  to  obtain,  they 
do  not  feel  justified  in  putting  up  good  accommodations.  It 
is  true  the  tenants  eat  well,  wear  good  clothes  and  wear  dia 
monds,  but  do  not  build  good  houses.'  " 

Everywhere  in  California  it  is  quite  plain  that,  as  fast 
as  a  Japanese  family  gets  on  its  feet  financially,  it  seeks 
cleaner  and  pleasanter  quarters,  goes  to  the  movies,  con 
sumes  ice-cream  soda,  buys  an  auto  and  in  every  other 
way  adopts  American  tastes  and  little  indulgences.  At 
the  same  time  it  appears  to  save  money  more  rapidly 
than  the  ordinary  American  family  on  the  same  economic 
level,  and  thus  advances  more  rapidly.  In  this  there  is 
no  mystery.  What  happens  is  that  all  members  of  the 
Japanese  family  work  except  the  babies,  while  in  the 
American  family  only  the  father  and  the  adult  children 
earn  money. 

The  Japanese  exhibits  higher  personal  morality  than 
any  other  immigrant  type  in  all  matters  of  conforming  to 
the  law.  Both  in  Hawaii  and  California,  it  is  a  matter 
of  record  that  Japanese  are  rarely  arrested  for  any  cause, 
and  few  actions  are  brought  against  them.  Doubtless 
this  is  due  in  some  measure  to  their  realization  of  the 
feeling  against  them  and  the  consequent  need  of  keeping 
out  of  trouble.  But  it  is  probably  in  the  main  an  ancient 
habit.  We  find  it  noted  by  many  travelers  in  Japan. 
In  another  connection  we  have  pointed  out  that  commer 
cial  dishonesty  in  Japan  is  common  and  tolerated  as  a 
matter  of  caste  ethics.  Of  this  we  see  little  in  California, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  the  great  bulk  of  the  Japanese 
there  are  farmers,  artisans,  and  students,  among  whom 
that  low  moral  standard  does  not  prevail  in  the  father 
land. 


234  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Among  Californians  to-day  there  is  little  disagreement 
as  to  these  characteristics  of  their  unwelcome  invaders. 
Why,  then,  should  there  be  such  opposition  to  the  yellow 
influx?  To  answer  this  question,  we  must  report  some 
facts  about  Californians  which,  though  fairly  well  known, 
have  not  been  cited  as  having  a  vital  bearing  on  the 
Oriental  issue.  And  again  we  must  plunge  into  the  psy 
chology  of  peoples,  for  here  lies  the  nub  of  the  whole 
business. 


CHAPTER  20 
THE   PSYCHOLOGY  OF   THE   CRISIS 

BOSTON,  according  to  an  ancient  jest,  is  not  a  place 
but  a  state  of  mind,  and  this  remark  fits  California. 
The  wag  who  first  perpetrated  the  line  probably  did  not 
realize  what  a  wealth  of  wisdom  lay  buried  in  the  words. 
Unwittingly,  he  came  amazingly  close  to  defining  true 
culture.  For  true  culture  is  an  organized  set  of  clearly 
recognized  desires  the  attaining  of  which  has  been  worked 
out  in  a  number  of  fairly  definite  group  habits.  People 
are  cultivated  when  they  have  reflected  upon  their  own 
natural  impulses,  wishes,  ideals,  and  aspiration,  have  har 
monized  these  to  some  degree,  and  have  then  worked  out 
methods  of  satisfying  them.  The  first  requisite  of  estab 
lishing  any  culture  is  to  ' '  know  your  own  mind, ' '  in  the 
every-day  sense  of  this  phrase.  The  second  requisite  is 
to  ascertain  which  of  your  many  desires  are  reconcilable 
and  which  are  irreconcilable,  and  to  give  up  the  latter 
in  order  that  you  may  better  achieve  the  former.  The 
final  requisite  is  to  devise  ways  and  means  of  achieving 
these.  By  long  trying  and  testing,  these  ways  and  means 
eventually  become  clear  and  fixed  habits. 

A  culture  may  be  horribly  crude,  as  is  that  of  the 
Hindu,  or  it  may  be  refined,  like  that  of  old  Boston.  Its 
quality  depends,  of  course,  upon  the  intelligence,  the  in 
genuity,  and  the  will  power  of  him  who  sets  out  to  or- 

235 


236  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

ganize  his  wishes  and  life  habits.  But  of  all  cultures 
high  and  low,  one  thing  is  equally  true:  Each  is  a 
fairly  complete  system  of  life  habits  so  closely  interlocked 
and  adjusted  to  one  another  that,  once  they  are  estab 
lished  in  an  adult,  they  can  be  broken  down  only  with 
great  violence  and  injury. 

Every  psychologist  is  familiar  with  this  fact.  It  is  no 
longer  open  to  doubt.  We  know  how  hard  it  is  to  try 
to  make  over  even  one  or  two  old  habits  in  a  man  of 
thirty.  If  he  is  normal,  his  behavior  has  become  so  fixed 
that  of  his  own  volition  he  cannot  drop  an  old  manner 
and  take  up  a  new  one.  To  make  him  do  this,  we  must 
exert  pressure  upon  him  from  without.  We  must  curse 
him,  exhort  him,  threaten  to  discharge  him,  drop  him 
from  good  society,  or  deprive  him  of  things  which  he 
needs  in  carrying  on  the  old  habit.  There  is  only  one 
instance  in  which  the  habit  change  can  be  effected  by  the 
man  himself,  and  this  is  not  an  exception  to  our  general 
rule,  but  only  an  obscure  case  of  it.  If  the  habit  gets  him 
into  trouble  and  he  comes  to  recognize  that  it  is  the 
cause  of  his  trouble,  then  he  may  set  about  to  discard  it. 
But  he  mil  do  this  only  when  the  disturbance  the  habit 
causes  is  worse  than  the  disturbance  that  surrendering  it 
causes.  For  example,  he  may  have  fallen  into  alcoholism 
to  such  a  degree  that  he  is  habitually  late  and  dull  in 
his  business,  slovenly  in  dress,  and  socially  undesirable. 
He  may  be  dropped  from  a  club,  he  may  lose  a  good  job, 
and  boys  on  the  street  may  deride  him.  All  of  which 
comes  into  conflict  with  other  habits  and  strong  desires 
such  as  playing  bridge  with  neighbor  Smith,  going  to  the 
theater  with  his  wife  and  son,  aspiring  to  become  a  di 
rector  of  the  company  he  works  for,  and  so  on.  If  these 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       237 

are  strong,  they  may  move  him  to  cut  out  the  drinking. 
But,  as  is  well  known,  they  usually  have  to  be  very 
strong  if  they  are  to  have  that  result. 

TVe  may  put  it  in  another  manner  to  bring  out  its  bear 
ing  on  the  Japanese  issue  in  California.  An  established 
habit  may  be  broken  down  only  by  pressure,  not  by  mere 
argument  or  any  other  play  of  ideas.  The  pressure  may 
come  from  without,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Allies  compelling 
the  Germans  to  give  up  their  kaiser  habit  and  affect  the 
outer  habits  of  democracy;  or  the  pressure  may  come 
from  within,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Russians  giving  up 
their  czar  habit  after  the  horrible  catastrophes  of  the 
Carpathian  campaigns  revealed  to  the  dullest  muzhik 
that  his  czar  habit  was  even  worse  than  his  vodka  habit. 
Unless  there  is  a  severe  and  sustained  irritation,  discom 
fort,  or  costly  inefficiency  which  men  recognize  as  the 
consequences  of  a  habit,  they  are  physically  unable  to 
break  the  latter.  The  loftiest  moral  philosophy  will  not 
shatter  it.  The  most  convincing  logic  will  rebound  from 
it  like  a  rubber  ball. 

How  clearly  this  has  appeared  in  the  history  of  many 
noble  campaigns  to  better  humanit}^!  Look  at  the  rec 
ord  of  alcoholism.  For  many  years  thousands  of  ear 
nest  men  and  women  strained  every  nerve  to  persuade 
drinkers  that  tLeir  habit  was  immoral.  They  quoted  the 
Scriptures.  They  appealed  to  the  so-called  "better  judg 
ment"  and  the  Christian  conscience.  But  nothing  hap 
pened.  The  first  great  drive  against  the  habit  failed  ut 
terly,  to  the  bewilderment  of  every  original  teetotaler. 
Some  years  afterward  the  appeal  to  reason  and  religion 
was  dropped.  A  new  appeal  was  made,  this  time  to 
obvious  and  evil  facts.  The  actual  harm  done  by  the 


238  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

ordinary  saloons  was  simply  pointed  out  in  statistics,  in 
news  stories,  in  pictures.  The  physiological  effects  of 
alcohol  were  published  luridly  and  often,  and,  be  it  said, 
mendaciously.  Hospitals  and  insane  asylums  and  jails 
were  ransacked  for  horrible  examples,  all  of  which  were 
held  up  to  public  gaze.  And  finally  the  presidents  and 
directors  of  our  great  industries  were  persuaded  to  make 
scientific  tests,  the  outcome  of  which  demonstrated  that 
every  employee  of  theirs  who  drank  regularly  was  a  poor 
investment.  In  conjunction  with  all  this  long  campaign 
of  proving  that  liquor  was  a  real  disturbance  in  life 
there  ran  the  education  of  the  rising  generation.  Boys 
and  girls  were  shown  the  evils  of  alcoholism  before  they 
built  up  drink  habits,  and  thus  they  fell  into  ways  of 
abstinence  naturally.  Thus,  by  bringing  immense  eco 
nomic  and  educational  pressure  to  bear,  and  pointing 
out  in  minute  detail  where  and  how  the  habit  was  caus 
ing  harm  in  daily  life  and  thwarting  many  high  desires, 
the  drive  won,  at  least  so  far  as  legislation  brings  victory. 
If  we  had  time,  we  might  similarly  recount  the  history 
of  the  whole  Christian  missionary  movement  in  Asia  and 
show  how  the  same  thing  has  occurred  there.  The  well- 
meaning  efforts  to  break  down  Asiatic  life  habits  by 
passing  around  Bibles  and  teaching  the  Ten  Command 
ments  and  coaxing  natives  to  church  went  on  for  many 
years  with  results  so  meager  that  finally  the  more  intel 
ligent  missionaries  themselves  admitted  that  there  was 
something  profoundly  wrong  with  their  system.  Not 
knowing  modern  psychology,  they  could  not  analyze  it 
completely,  but  their  common  sense  guided  them  in  the 
right  direction.  They  did  not  understand  that  the  re 
ligious  and  moral  ideas  they  were  talking  at  the  Asiatics 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       239 

were  in  reality  the  mere  verbal  expression  of  a  highly 
intricate  set  of  life  habits  which  grew  up  under  peculiar 
conditions  in  the  Mediterranean  countries,  and  have 
been  slowly  and  slightly  changed  in  the  course  of  many 
generations  of  European  life.  They  did  not  realize  that 
the  written  words  of  ethics  and  piety  never  were  the 
cause  of  those  habits,  but  only  the  subsequent  expression 
of  them.  Neither  did  they  know  that  the  ways  of  the 
Asiatic  were  as  deep  as  life  itself,  and  that  those  colossal 
systems  of  personal  and  social  habits  could  no  more  be 
altered  by  sermons  and  prayers  than  the  tides  of  the  Pa 
cific  can  be  altered  by  Christian  Science.  They  could 
not  see  that  the  cultures  of  the  Hindus,  the  Chinamen, 
and  the  Japanese  were  each  an  organization  of  hundreds 
of  established  nervous  reactions  as  stable  as  your  habit 
of  hand-writing  and  your  neighbor's  habit  of  reading  his 
morning  newspaper.  And  they  did  not  know  that  such 
habit  systems  break  down  only  under  enormous  pressure 
from  within  or  without,  just  as  the  habit  of  chewing  to 
bacco  or  going  to  church  does.  Thus  misinformed,  the 
entire  first  movement  in  foreign  mission  work  was  not 
only  a  total  failure,  it  was  a  blunder  that  permanently 
injured  Western  culture  in  the  eyes  of  the  Orientals,  as 
everybody  now  admits.  Not  until  the  workers  took  up 
social  service  and  practical  education  did  they  begin  to 
make  a  worthwhile  impression  upon  Asia.  And  even 
then  it  is  more  than  doubtful  that  they  would  have  made 
the  slightest  headway  had  it  not  been  for  the  tremendous 
and  often  outrageous  pressure  from  without  which  the 
European  powers  exerted  upon  Asiatics  to  buy  European 
goods  and  adopt  European  wa3rs. 

Now  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  the  crisis  in  Califor- 


240  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

nia?  Well,  it  brings  us  to  the  very  heart  of  the  whole 
matter. 

The  crisis  has  not  grown  out  of  race  prejudice  in  the 
ordinary  sense  of  the  term,  and  it  is  not  merely  economic, 
although  economic  factors  are  prominent  in  it.  It  is  a 
conflict  of  two  highly  organized  adult  habits.  Neither 
culture  can  merge  into  the  other  during  the  lifetime  of 
the  present  adult  whites  and  adult  Japanese  unless  there 
is  some  tremendous  pressure  from  within  the  members 
of  one  group  or  else  some  similar  pressure  brought  to 
bear  from  without. 

There  is  no  indication  that  pressure  of  either  sort  exists 
or  is  likely  to  arise.  The  Japanese  are  satisfied  with  their 
group  and  personal  habits,  and  the  Californians  are  satis 
fied  wilh  theirs.  The  Japanese  cannot  compel  the  Cali 
fornians  by  external  pressure  to  adopt  the  Japanese  hab 
its,  nor  can  the  Californians  force  the  Japanese  to  adopt 
theirs. 

It  would  require  a  sizable  book  to  describe  the  hun 
dreds  of  habits  involved  in  these  two  cultures,  but  there 
are  some  which  must  be  pointed  out.  Only  a  trained 
psychologist  will  appreciate  the  depths  to  which  some  of 
these  folk-ways  sink  in  the  nature  of  man. 

ralifornians,  especially  in  the  farming  regions  where 
the  Japanese  have  appeared,  are  the  most  homogeneous 
group  of  the  older  American  stocks  in  all  the  United 
Slates  to-day.  They  are  the  descendants  of  the  Argo 
nauts  and  the  other  men  of  New  England  and  the  North 
Atlantic  States  who  came  in  the  great  gold  rush  of  1849. 
These  men  were  of  the  old  hardy,  adventuring  type,  the 
sort  that  England,  and,  to  a  lesser  degree,  Germany  and 
Franee,  sent  forth  in  wave  after  wave  ever  since  the  days 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       241 

of  Columbus.  They  were  rough  and  ready,  quick  on  the 
trigger,  on  the  make,  and  as  hard  as  nails,  not  always 
very  "nice  folks"  or  agreeable  in  an  argument,  but  ad 
mirably  adapted  to  the  job  of  conquering  the  wilderness. 
Never  were  there  more  complete  individualists  than  these 
pioneers.  If  they  hadn't  been  constitutionally  fond  of 
going  it  alone,  they  never  would  have  climbed  aboard 
their  prairie-schooners  and  trailed  the  setting  sun.  Nat 
ural  selection,  therefore,  filled  California  with  the  most 
"unsocial"  inhabitants  ever  gathered  in  an  isolated  re 
gion.  Only  in  Australia  do  we  find  their  like,  and  even 
there  we  find  a  marked  difference  in  that  early  Austra 
lians  were  convicts,  and  hence  largely  anti-social  rather 
than  merely  unsocial. 

The  individualism  of  the  fathers  has  descended  upon 
the  sons.  To-day  California  is  the  last  stronghold  of 
that  elder  American  complex  of  habits.  To  be  sure,  the 
more  primitive  manifestations  of  it  have  disappeared. 
Men  no  longer  pack  their  kits  and  strike  off  back  coun 
try  in  disgust  whenever  the  railroad  comes  within  twenty 
miles  of  their  ranch.  But  they  do  resent  routine  labor 
in  shops  and  factories,  the  time  clock,  efficiency  experts, 
and  personnel  managers.  This,  at  least,  is  the  testimony 
of  some  observers  in  the  San  Francisco  Bay  industrial 
district.  And  to  this  dislike  of  discipline  they  trace  some 
of  the  intensity  of  the  many  labor  troubles  that  have 
scourged  the  Pacific  coast  for  a  full  decade. 

We  see  the  same  rank  individualism  on  the  side  of  the 
property-owners  and  employers,  too.  Until  the  World 
War  and  the  tremendous  external  pressure  from  the  Fed 
eral  Government  struck  California,  it  is  notorious  that 
men  in  control  of  lumber-camps,  mines,  large  ranches, 


242  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

and  many  industrial  concerns  ignored  both  the  rights 
and  the  creature  comforts  of  their  employees  to  a  scan 
dalous  degree.  Filthy  bunk-houses  were  provided  for 
harvest  hands.  Bedding  that  swarmed  with  lice  was  the 
best  the  lumberjack  got.  Workers  who  came  from  a  dis 
tance  were  left  to  find  transportation  as  best  they  could 
except  when  crops  were  in  danger  of  spoiling  through 
lack  of  quick  harvesters.  The  notion  of  medical  super 
vision  for  rural  and  back-country  laborers  had  not  yet 
been  born.  All  of  this,  and  more,  has  been  extensively 
proved  by  special  investigators,  both  state  and  federal, 
and  was  published  in  official  bulletins  during  the  war. 
It  does  not  prove  any  special  depravity  in  the  California 
employer.  It  merely  demonstrates  what  every  social  psy 
chologist  knows  is  a  universal  law  of  human  nature; 
namely,  that  the  old  habits  which  such  men  acquired 
thirty  or  forty  years  ago  continue  as  long  as  some  great 
force  from  within  or  without  does  not  develop  to  shatter 
them.  These  men  were  doing  what  nearly  all  employers 
were  doing  fifty  years  ago,  and  the  pressure  to  change 
struck  California  long  after  it  had  largely  succeeded  in 
Europe  and  in  our  own  East. 

This  same  crude  individualism  in  the  old  days  led  to 
land  grabbing  and  the  wholesale  piracy  of  water  rights. 
The  evil  effects  produced  by  these  abuses  are  continuing 
to  poison  political  and  rural  life  all  over  California. 
Three  interests,  the  Miller  &  Lux  Company,  the  Kern 
County  Land  Company, ^and  the  Southern  Pacific  Kail- 
road,  still  own  more  acres  in  the  State  than  there  are  in 

* 

the  German  Empire.  Not  many  years  ago  a  man  on 
horseback  starting  from  the  northern  boundary  of  the 
State,  or  even  well  over  in  Oregon,  could  ride  to  Mexico 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       243 

through  the  entire  length  of  the  State  without  getting  off 
land  owned  by  the  Miller  &  Lux  Company,  which  had 
as  many  men  on  horseback  guarding  its  fourteen  million 
acres  from  hunters,  squatters  and  tramps  as  there  were 
in  the  United  States  cavalry  before  the  present  war. 

Not  even  these  figures,  however,  convey  the  true 
meaning  of  landlordism  in  California.  It  must  be  added 
that  the  early  land  grabbers  naturally  pounced  upon  the 
well  watered  tracts  first  of  all,  with  the  result  that  to 
day  more  than  one-half  of  all  the  land  in  California 
which  has  water  sufficient  for  farming  is  in  the  hands  of 
a  dozen  or  two  men  and  companies.  Farm  experts  as 
sure  me  that  Henry  Miller,  of  the  Miller  &  Lux  Com 
pany,  alone  owns  between  one-fifth  and  one-sixth  of  all 
the  irrigated  acreage  in  the  State.  The  Natomas  Com 
pany  holds  about  60,000  acres.  The  Kern  County  Land 
Company  possesses  not  far  from  125,000  acres.  All  of 
which  is,  to  be  sure,  a  mere  trifle  as  compared  either 
with  the  size  of  California  or  with  the  total  holdings  of 
these  and  other  large  landlords;  but  an  ominous  thing 
when  we  bear  in  mind  that  the  real  California,  the  place 
where  men  can  make  homes  and  develop  the  country 
permanently,  is  just  these  few  thousand  square  miles 
where  water  flows. 

The  history  of  land  grabbing  corruptions  in  California 
shows  that  in  many  of  the  best  rural  districts  to-day  the 
small  farmer  is  still  laboring  under  severe  handicaps, 
thanks  largely  to  grossly  unjust  laws  regulating  the  dis 
tribution  of  water  for  irrigation.  Tax  assessments  are 
manipulated  by  the  big  land  owners  so  that  often  land 
which,  it  is  declared,  could  not  be  bought  for  $200  an 
acre  is  assessed  at  $13.90.  In  Kern  County,  which  is 


2M  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

owned  almost  entirely  by  the  Kern  County  Land  Com 
pany,  much  land  assessed  at  about  $2  an  acre  sells  for 
$200. 

The  State  Commission  on  Land  Colonization  says: 
"  California  has  an  immense  area  of  fertile  and  unpeo 
pled  land  .  .  .  comparatively  few  settlers  are  coming 
here,  and  many  who  came  in  recent  years  have  left. 
Costly  advertising  and  still  more  costly  personal  solici 
tations  have  not  served  to  attract  colonists.  We  have  not 
found  a  single  settler  who,  bringing  with  him  only  lim 
ited  capital,  has  been  able  to  pay  for  his  land  in  the  time 
agreed  upon  in  his  contract,"  Is  it  to  be  wondered  at 
that  the  big  land  holders  are  anxious  to  fill  their  estates 
with  Chinese  and  Japanese? 

The  plain  truth  is  not  pleasant  but  must  be  spoken. 
California — and  I  mean  the  real  California,  not  the  over- 
boomed  vacationist  Los  Angeles  nor  busy,  commercial 
San  Francisco — is  still  a  generation  behind  the  rest  of 
the  country  in  its  landlordism.  These  royal  estates  and 
a  hundred  others  of  princely  extent  and  richness  still  are 
California.  The  Great  Valley,  which  is  the  only  possible 
center  of  large  rural  population,  is  filled  with  the  horizon- 
wide  holdings  that  were  annexed,  sometimes  honestly  but 
more  often  by  murder  and  fraud,  by  the  old  pioneers  and 
the  sharpers  who  came  slinking  in  behind  them.  The 
descendants  of  these  adventurers  and  buccaneers  domi 
nate  politics  in  many  regions  and  naturally  use  their 
power  to  retain  power.  They  retain  the  old  pre-civilized 
contempt  for  the  common  laborer  and  the  small  farmer. 
Their  outlook  on  life  is  admirably  exhibited  by  one  of 
their  own  spokesmen,  the  Los  Angeles  "Times,"  which 
is  owned  by  a  family  whose  record  of  land  dealings  in 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       245 

California  and  Mexico  and  whose  attitude  toward  the 
working  classes  make  the  Junkers  of  East  Prussia  seem 
more  or  less  benign  philanthropists.  These  people  have 
strongly  advocated  the  importation  of  Chinese  coolies, 
for  the  blessed  purpose  of  operating  their  estates.  To 
quote  the  "Times": 

"If  a  machine  were  to  be  invented  which  could  do  all  the 
arduous  work  now  performed  by  hand  on  the  farms,  it  would 
be  welcomed  as  a  Godsend.  That  machine  would  mean  in 
creased  production  and  a  lowered  cost  of  living.  Then  why 
the  protest  against  employing  a  human  machine  to  do  the 
work?  Who  would  be  injured  if  1,000,000  Chinamen  were 
brought  to  this  country  to  work  on  the  farms  or  where  needed, 
and  if  100,000  of  them  were  to  be  employed  in  California? 
They  would  replace  none  of  the  white  workers  in  California  in 
dustries.  The  only  ones  to  be  affected  would  be  the  Japanese 
farmers.  This  influx  of  Chinese  workmen  would  break  the 
Japanese  corner  on  the  food  market.  The  workers  would  be 
able  to  live  for  less.  The  grocery  and  vegetable  bill  of  the 
average  Los  Angeles  housewife  would  be  cut  in  half  in  a 
year;  and  not  a  single  white  person  in  Los  Angeles  would  be 
thrown  out  of  employment.  Why  are  we  shrinking  from  a 
solution  of  the  labor  problem  which  would  be  of  such  general 
benefit?" 

What  the  hypothetical  reduction  of  food  prices  would 
do  to  the  small  American  farmer,  deponent  sayeth  not. 
And  for  the  excellent  reason  that  he  does  not  care.  The 
California  Junker  loses  no  sleep  over  the  woes  of  the 
white  man  with  fifty  or  a  hundred  acres.  All  he  wants 
is  to  make  California  into  an  old  Mexico,  a  place  of  stu 
pendous  haciendas  managed  by  an  expert  or  two  and 
tilled  by  thousands  of  peons  and  coolies  at  a  dollar  a 
day — or  less,  if  the  scoundrels  can  be  persuaded  to  take 


246  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

it.  As  he  owns  whole  towns  and  even  counties,  he  is  a 
law  unto  himself,  exactly  like  the  petty  Oriental  poten 
tate.  And  the  American  who  ventures  to  criticize  or 
amend  his  enactments  must  expect  a  traitor's  fate.  The 
history  of  California,  even  down  to  the  present,  is 
smeared  crimson  with  the  blood  of  decent,  freedom-loving 
Americans  shot  down  in  ambush  by  cow  punchers  and 
greasers  in  the  hire  of  some  land-rich  thug  who  disliked 
being  sued  in  his  own  hired  court  before  his  own  hired 
judge  and  jury  and  there  exposed  as  a  crook. 

How  strongly  this  has  colored  the  small  farmer's  out 
look  is  revealed  in  the  remark  made  to  me  by  a  Kern 
County  farmer  last  summer.  "If  we  fellows  could  only 
hang  about  three  hundred  hand-picked  land  crooks,"  said 
he  soberly,  "and  then  make  Elwood  Mead  dictator  for 
life  and  give  him  all  the  hemp  he  needed  and  a  firing 
squad,  California  would  be  fit  to  join  the  United  States 
in  a  few  years.  Right  now  it  's  a  rich  man 's  heaven  and 
a  poor  man's  hell." 

I  do  not  venture  an  opinion  on  this  genial  program. 
I  pass  it  on  as  evidence  showing  up  the  psychology  of  the 
crisis.  The  small  farmer  of  the  Great  Valley,  so  far  as  I 
have  seen  him  and  listened  to  him,  certainly  regards  the 
influx  of  Japanese  as  a  powerful  aid  in  enabling  the  old 
Junkers  to  get  cheap  labor  with  which  to  work  their 
estates,  thereby  underselling  the  hundred-acre  American 
and  later  selling  off  tracts  to  the  Japanese  as  fast  as  they 
save  enough  to  buy.  At  the  end  of  the  process,  the  small 
farmer  foresees  himself  and  all  his  kind  squeezed  be 
tween  a  horde  of  small  Oriental  farmers  and  the  old 
estates,  all  manned  with  a  constantly  replenished  stream 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       247 

of  Japanese  who,  for  their  first  two  or  three  years  in  our 
country,  will  work  hard  in  order  to  get  ahead. 

This  prospect  makes  the  small  farmer  inclined  to  pack 
up  and  get  out  the  minute  he  sees  powerfully  organized 
groups  of  Japanese  settling  around  his  ranch.  His  ex 
perience  with  powerful  groups  has  taught  him  that  they 
bring  bad  luck  to  the  money  in  his  jeans.  He  expects 
them  to  be  crooks.  He  expects  them  to  play  politics 
against  him.  And  he  does  not  expect  much  help  from 
the  Government  or  from  his  neighbors  in  holding  his  own 
against  such  intruders.  This  habit  of  mind  and  action, 
while  unquestionably  weakening  fast  in  more  progressive 
districts,  still  lingers  in  its  old  purity  and  power  in  the 
Great  Valley. 

The  same  pioneer  habit  which  led  men  to  take  the  law 
into  their  own  hands  and  to  form  vigilance  committees 
has  lately  reappeared  in  the  anti-Japanese  movement. 
During  1920,  in  many  localities  of  California,  citizens 
who  disliked  the  Japanese  imitated  the  men  of  '49  and 
" served  notice"  on  the  intruders.  The  case  of  the  Se- 
bastopol  farmers  is  fairly  typical.  A  rancher  by  the 
name  of  Holm  received  a  nattering  offer  for  his  twenty- 
acre  apple-orchard  from  one  Uyeda,  a  Japanese.  He  ac 
cepted  the  offer,  engaged  an  attorney  to  draw  up  the 
papers,  then  went  to  the  local  bank  president  with  regard 
to  the  deed.  At  this  stage  of  the  game  some  of  the  Amer 
ican  Legion  members  heard  of  it  and  took  the  matter  in 
hand.  They  told  Holm  and  his  attorney  that  the  deal 
could  not  go  through.  And  it  did  not.  Anybody  who 
knows  California  realizes  that  the  would-be  buyer  acted 
wisely  in  not  appealing  to  the  law,  for  the  rougher  ele- 


248  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

ments  of  the  population  are  coming  to  show  the  same  su 
periority  to  the  law  which  we  have  seen  for  many  years 
all  over  the  South  in  the  Southerners'  dealings  with  the 
negro. 

Contrast  with  all  this  the  Japanese  habits  of  submerg 
ing  oneself  utterly  in  the  group  and  relying  on  the  Gov 
ernment  for  everything.  The  yellow  man  is  as  utterly 
a  socialist  as  the  native  son  is  an  individualist.  We  have 
pointed  out  elsewhere  the  grip  these  social  habits  have 
upon  the  ordinary  man  in  Japan.  The  Japanese  them 
selves  regard  it  as  a  national  trait  and  have  a  common 
name  for  it,  Seifumanno-Shugi.  It  rests  on  the  ancient 
rule  of  the  family  and  the  clan  which  prevailed  for  thou 
sands  of  years.  WTe  have  shown  how  the  Japanese  Gov 
ernment  owns  and  manages  railways,  steamship  lines, 
postal  and  telegraph  and  telephone  systems,  gas,  water, 
and  electric-light  plants,  the  tobacco  business,  the  salt 
monopoly,  the  camphor  industry,  and  how  it  even  domi 
nates  the  management  of  the  banks  and  many  large  man 
ufacturing  concerns.  And  we  have  told  how  the  Japa 
nese  farmers  in  California  come  from  certain  rural  clans, 
bring  their  clan  customs  with  them,  and  pool  their  for 
tunes  and  their  services  under  the  rule  of  the  clan  lead 
ers. 

Now,  this  profound  difference  in  going  at  tasks  has 
already  led  to  much  friction  in  California.  Look  at  the 
way  Japanese  districts  have  built  up.  Easterners  do  not 
realize  the  team  play  the  Japanese  use  in  this  enterprise, 
and  still  less  the  psychological  effect  upon  the  whites  in 
the  region  "invaded."  Elwood  Mead  has  investigated 
many  of  these  developments,  and  finds  that  what  happens 
is  something  like  this:  a  few  Japanese  come  to  work  in 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS        249 

the  neighborhood  for  a  year  or  two,  during  which  time 
they  study  the  soils  and  crops  and  learn  which  tracts  are 
the  best.  Next,  backed  by  members  of  their  clan  who 
have  not  yet  appeared,  they  lease  some  of  the  desirable 
acreage,  paying,  if  necessary,  a  rental  far  far  above  the 
sums  a  white  man  would  pay.  All  over  the  State  they 
have  thus  forced  up  the  rental  value  abnormally. 

Almost  invariably,  the  white  owner  of  the  land  is  de 
lighted  to  make  so  much  profit,  so  he  signs  the  lease  con 
tract.  From  that  time  on,  the  Japanese  begin  bobbing 
up,  and  in  a  short  time  they  have  picked  up  all  the  good 
rentable  land  about  a  village.  They  create  their  own  co 
operative  buying  and  selling  organization.  They  fill  the 
public  schools  with  their  children.  They  set  up  native 
schools.  They  practise  Buddhism.  As  soon  as  possible, 
they  begin  buying  farm  land  either  in  the  names  of  their 
American-born  babies  or  else  through  corporations  which 
easily  evade  the  intent  of  the  law  prohibiting  aliens  from 
acquiring  title  to  real  estate.  Once  they  possess  such 
land  in  quantity,  they  begin  to  force  down  the  rents  they 
have  been  paying  for  leased  farms ;  and  as  many  Amer 
ican  farmers  have,  by  this  stage  of  the  game,  left  the  dis 
trict  in  disgust,  they  find  this  fairly  easy.  In  some 
neighborhoods,  rents  have  first  been  driven  up  to  three  or 
four  times  the  prevailing  scale,  only  to  be  driven  down 
later,  after  foothold  had  been  secured,  well  below  the 
earlier  level.  And  by  reason  of  the  presence  of  a  Japa 
nese  colony,  the  market  value  of  such  acreage  drops 
sharply,  for  no  whites  will  ever  move  into  a  Japanese  dis 
trict.  Thus  the  Japanese  manage  to  buy  up  all  they 
wish  at  a  bargain. 

In  these  methods  no  consistent  American  can  find  a 


250  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

moral  wrong.  They  are  not  nearly  so  questionable  as 
scores  of  business  practices  favored  by  our  own  commer 
cial  classes.  They  are  shrewd :  that  is  the  worst  one  can 
say  of  them.  But  the  essential  fact  is  that  they  anger 
the  whites  who  have  been  the  victims  of  the  habit.  No 
man  likes  to  see  the  value  of  his  farm  dwindle  as  the 
result  of  alien  neighbors.  No  man  likes  to  see  his  chil 
dren  in  school  with  a  crowd  of  foreign  children  who  speak 
their  own  language  and  herd  apart  from  his  own.  No 
man  likes  to  see  his  old  friends  move  away  one  by  one, 
leaving  him  alone  in  the  midst  of  people  whose  tongue 
he  does  not  speak  and  with  whom  he  can  have  no  social 
intercourse,  even  if  he  tries  to.  And  no  farmer's  wife 
likes  to  be  left  without  women  to  gossip  with.  These 
hundred  and  one  daily  little  habits  are  life. 

I  know  that  many  Easterners  and  some  Californians 
will  say  that,  underneath  all  this  dislike,  there  certainly 
runs  a  strain  of  vicious  race  prejudice.  This,  however, 
cannot  well  be  defended.  For  Californians  themselves 
have  unwittingly  supplied  pretty  conclusive  evidence  that 
race  feeling  has  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  the  whole 
matter. 

Let  me  tell  the  story  of  the  Fresno  Armenians.  It 
is  enlightening. 

THE   CASE  OP   THE   ARMENIANS 

Climb  aboard  an  auto  anywhere  in  the  upper  San 
Joaquin  Valley  and,  working  northward  slowly,  keep  an 
eye  on  the  waj^side  signs.  Before  you  reach  the  mile- 
post  that  tells  you  Fresno  is  fifty  miles  away,  you  will 
begin  to  encounter  the  following  legend : 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       251 


NO   JAPS   OR   ARMENIANS   WANTED! 


You  will  see  it  in  conspicuous  letters  in  front  of  ranch 
houses  and  sometimes  at  the  ends  of  side  roads  that  lead 
far  back  to  the  rims  of  the  great  flats.  If  you  are  a 
stranger,  you  will  wonder  why  the  authors  of  these 
brusque  warnings  have  coupled  the  Japanese  and  the 
long-suffering  Armenians  thus.  And  if  you  are  an  in 
quisitive  wayfarer  and  hobnob  with  the  natives,  you  will 
soon  come  upon  the  answer  to  your  question.  When  you 
do,  you  will  see  the  signs  in  a  new  light.  You  will  see  in 
them  an  abridged  treatise  on  economics  and  social  psy 
chology.  You  will  understand  many  things  about  the 
Japanese  crisis  which  have  been  dark — or  else  darkened. 

The  facts  behind  the  signs  prove  conclusively  that  the 
agitation  against  the  Japanese  people  in  California  is 
not  founded  measurably  upon  a  genuine  race  prejudice 
comparable  to  the  feeling  which  has  prompted  many 
Texas  villagers  to  post  notices  at  the  ends  of  their  main 
street  commanding:  "Nigger!  Move  on!"  The  Ar 
menian  is  a  white  man.  Why  should  he  be  coupled  with 
the  Japanese  in  the  hostile  thoughts  of  the  San  Joaquin 
Valley  farmers?  Let  me  give  you  the  farmers'  own  an 
swers  to  this  question,  as  I  got  it  from  a  number  of  them. 

In  the  Fresno  district  there  are,  so  the  farmers  state, 
about  16,000  Armenians.  (This  figure  I  have  not  been 
able  to  check  up  in  census  reports,  but  it  is  certain  that 
the  number  is  high  in  any  event.)  Coming  from  a  land 
where  fig  culture  has  been  practised  for  centuries,  these 
aliens  brought  with  them  an  unusual  degree  of  skill  in 
handling  tree,  fruit,  and  the  merchandising  thereof. 


252  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Now  the  fig  is  a  peculiarly  difficult  proposition,  for  a 
number  of  purely  technical  reasons  into  which  we  need 
not  go  here,  beyond  saying  that  the  fruit  is  easily  dam 
aged,  both  on  the  tree  and  in  the  picking,  does  not  keep 
at  all  well,  and  involves  much  delicate  hand  labor.  Some 
years  ago  there  was  a  fig  boom  in  various  parts  of  Cali 
fornia,  during  which  many  Americans  who  had  pleasant 
boyhood  memories  about  one's  ''vine  and  fig  tree,"  and 
also  wanted  to  make  the  enormous  profits  which  the  land 
boomers  assured  them  were  as  easy  as  eating  figs,  set  out 
thousands  of  trees.  The  Armenians  began  coming  in 
and,  so  allege  a  few  citizens,  sat  back  and  watched  the 
proceedings  with  obvious  interest. 

Presently  some  of  the  new  fig  enthusiasts  became  dis 
couraged.  Figs  seemed  to  show  evil  inclinations  to  de 
velop  sundry  diseases,  to  drop  off  from  their  appointed 
branches  prematurely,  and  to  spoil  over  night.  Also 
labor  was  harder  and  harder  to  get  when  wanted.  And, 
so  I  am  informed,  only  five  or  six  years  ago,  you  might 
have  bought  figs  around  Fresno  at  about  a  fifth  of  their 
present  price,  and  fig  acreage  was  being  offered  at  all 
sorts  of  prices  from  $250  to  $500  an  acre.  Then  the 
onlooking  Armenians  began  buying  in.  Of  course,  they 
already  had  developed  considerable  holdings  of  their  own 
and  had  been  prospering  mightily ;  thus  they  were  finan 
cially  well  fixed  for  annexing  ever  more  acres. 

The  Americans  went  back  to  alfalfa,  hens,  or  the 
movies.  The  Armenians  nursed  figs.  And  the  figs  grew 
lustily.  The  Armenians  multiplied  in  numbers  and  in 
wealth.  They  bought  vast  limousines  and  racing  cars. 
They  wore  fine  silks  and  smoked  heavy  cigars.  And  with 
prosperity  they  seem,  so  it  is  alleged,  to  have  developed  a 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       253 

feeling  of  superiority  and  aloofness  toward  the  Ameri 
cans  which  the  Americans  do  not  enjoy.  As  two  men 
put  it  to  me,  * '  whenever  you  see  an  auto  breaking  all  the 
speed  laws  around  Fresno  and  running  over  babies,  you 
may  bank  on  it  that  there  's  an  Armenian  at  the  wheel." 
Furthermore,  it  must  be  added  sorrowfully  but  in  the 
interest  of  history,  most  of  the  men  I  chanced  to  speak 
to  on  the  whole  subject  declared  that  the  business  meth 
ods  of  the  Armenians  fully  justified  the  Turks  in  their 
treatment  of  those  people  for  the  past  century  or  two. 
From  school  teachers  down  to  farm  hands  came  the  same 
verdict :  the  Armenian  is  altogether  too  sharp  in  his  buy 
ing  and  selling,  and  he  works  with  others  of  his  own  kind 
to  outwit  or  even  to  defraud  the  native.  There  is  no 
need  of  going  into  unpleasant  details  on  this  point. 
Everybody  who  has  collected  facts  about  the  Armenians 
is  only  too  familiar  with  this  indictment,  which  has  be 
come  a  part  of  the  folklore  of  the  entire  Mediterranean 
country,  where  for  untold  generations  the  saying  has 
been  current,  in  a  number  of  variants:  "It  takes  two 
Italians  to  outwit  a  Greek,  two  Greeks  to  outwit  a  Jew, 
and  two  Jews  to  outwit  an  Armenian." 

The  fact  is  clear.  San  Joaquin  Valley  farmers  dislike 
the  Armenian  because  he  has  been  shrewder  than  they — 
often  unscrupulously  so — and  because  he  has  organized 
his  own  kind  in  economic  competition  against  the  older 
peoples  of  the  land  and  because  their  losses  have  in  many 
cases  been  his  gain,  as  in  the  instance  of  the  fig  lands 
which,  in  the  past  few  years,  have  risen  to  as  high  as 
$2,000  an  acre  in  value — the  very  same  acres  which 
Americans  sold  in  disgust  a  few  years  earlier  for  $250  to 
$500. 


254  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Against  the  Armenian  it  is  impossible  to  raise  the  cry 
of  the  hostile  race.  He  is  as  much  a  white  man  as  any 
of  the  mingled  bloods  of  the  Near  East  and  probably 
more  white  than  many  of  the  Sicilians  we  welcome  to  our 
shores.  So  in  the  criticisms  of  him  we  get  the  simple 
truth  more  readily  than  in  the  case  of  the  Japanese.  As 
we  have  elsewhere  shown,  the  main  tide  of  feeling  against 
the  yellow  man  is  not  his  yellowness;  it  is  his  business 
energy,  skill,  persistence,  and  team  work,  along  with 
which  goes  his  evident  sense  of  pride,  or  even  superiority. 
The  race  cry  is,  in  nine  out  of  ten  cases,  a  simple  camou 
flage  that  saves  the  face  of  the  complainant.  It  is  un 
pleasant  to  admit  that  any  stranger  from  overseas  is 
smarter  than  you  are.  So,  when  you  want  to  drive  him 
out  of  his  victorious  competition  with  you,  it  is  more 
satisfactory  to  say  that  East  is  East  and  West  is  West, 
and  the  twain  can  never  meet. 

Once  more  we  are  brought  back  to  the  same  old 
things — the  deep  conflict  between  group  habits  of  work 
and  living.  It  is  not  a  mere  local  issue.  The  California 
crisis  is  only  one  of  a  thousand  aspects  of  a  world-wide 
struggle  that  will  go  on  as  long  as  human  progress  is 
possible. 


Turn,  now,  to  another  point  of  contrast.  The  outward 
and  visible  behavior  of  men  is,  and  must  be,  the  basis 
of  all  mutual  understanding  and  approachment,  and  in 
this  respect  Californians  and  Japanese  are  miles  apart. 
The  Californian  is  a  highly  expressive  person.  He  is 
frank  and  outspoken  in  the  commoner  exchange  of  ideas 
and  feelings.  In  the  higher  forms  he  exhibits  a  wealth 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       255 

and  variety  of  artistic  expression  conspicuously  above 
that  of  his  countrymen  over  the  mountains.  California 
notoriously  produces  more  poets,  more  artists,  more  sing 
ers,  more  actors,  and  more  authors  to  the  square  inch 
than  any  other  part  of  North  America.  As  a  result  of 
this,  she  has  attracted  many  such  from  the  East,  thereby 
increasing  the  natural  selection,  the  number,  and  influ 
ence  of  this  mental  type.  Art  has  come  to  play  an  aston 
ishing  part  in  the  daily  life  of  the  people.  It  receives 
more  attention  in  the  public  schools  and  the  universities 
than  anywhere  in  the  East,  and  its  many  forms  are  cul 
tivated  with  assiduity  in  half  a  hundred  towns  and  art 
colonies.  California  is  to  America  what  Italy  used  to  be 
to  Europe,  in  aspiration  at  least,  if  not  always  in  fact. 

This  trait,  like  any  other,  sometimes  develops  in  a  use 
less  or  even  injurious  form/^in  California  it  frequently 
plays  havoc  with  the  newspapers.  Nowhere  else  in  our 
country  do  editors  and  reporters  allow  their  personal  emo 
tions  and  prejudices  to  disturb  their  thinking  and  cor 
rupt  the  news  so  grossly  and  so  often  as  in  the  Golden 
State.//^)utbursts  of  extravagant  enthusiasm,  red  hate, 
and  lyric  political  oratory  are  as  common  here  as  they 
are  rare  in  New  York  and  Chicago,  outside  of  the  Hearst 
papers,  which  are  a  California  product  in  every  respect, 
/'journalists  are  familiar  with  the  undue  attention  given 
in  the  Los  Angeles  and  San  Francisco  papers  to  domestic 
and  other  petty  happenings  that  have  only  an  emotional 
value,  and  also  with  their  amazing  distortion  of  the  sim 
plest,  most  straightforward  eventSy^A  notable  instance 
of  this  latter  was  the  absurd  and  infantile  twisting  and 
lying  about  the  Democratic  National  Convention  in  San 
Francisco  by  the  newspapers  of  that  town.  The  passions 


256  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

of  cheap  politics  and  personal  spites  corrupted  the  news 
columns  of  all  save  one  paper  so  disgracefully  that  the 
National  Committee  felt  constrained  to  publish  a  protest. 
To  the  psychologist  this  inability  to  control  one's  emo 
tions  and  passions  in  such  a  simple  matter  as  reporting  a 
convention  is  partly  a  phase  of  that  same  artistic  expres 
siveness  which  we  have  pointed  out. 

This  weakness  of  the  artistic  temperament  has,  oddly 
enough,  been  a  great  hindrance  in  the  way  of  solving  the 
Japanese  question.  It  has  caused  American  readers  east 
of  the  Rockies  to  laugh  at  the  hysterical  Californians  and 
their  fantastic  charges  against  the  Japanese.  ^What  most 
of  us  have  been  reading  in  California  newspapers  for  the 
last  fifteen  years  about  the  Japanese  has  largely  war 
ranted  the  conclusion,  now  generally  held,  that  Califor 
nians  are,  as  "The  Nation"  has  said,  "suffering  from  a 
ba/i  case  of  nerves.^/ 

,/The  editor  of  tms  volume  has  inspected  several  hun 
dred  California  newspaper  reports  and  editorials  about 
the  Japanese  over  the  last  ten-year  period,  and  finds  a 
painfully  high  percentage  of  nonsense,  malice,  and  hys 
teria  in  them.  One  recent  instance  may  be  cited  to  show 
the  total  lack  of  intelligence  on  the  part  of  the  editors  and 
reporters  alike  in  dealing  with  a  difficult  and  delicate  po 
litical  problem./7 

*^In  July,  J.920,  several  deaths  occurred  in  and  around 
SanTFfancisco,  which,  according  to  some  physicians, 
might  have  been  caused  by  the  eating  of  unclean  vege 
tables.  A  bright  editor  sent  a  bright  reporter  out  to 
cover  the  story.  The  reporter,  if  we  may  judge  from 
subsequent  journalistic  events,  did  not  interview  the  phy 
sicians  minutely,  if  at  all;  he  hastened  with  that  uner- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       257 

ring  instinct  for  news  which,  is  the  glory  of  his  craft, 
straight  to  the  places  where  vegetables  come  from  and 
investigated  them.  Naturally,  the  vegetables  were  under 
the  tutelage  of  some  Japanese,  as  nearly  all  vegetables 
are  in  that  State.  The  reporter  looked  into  the  methods 
of  these  sons  of  the  soil  in  bringing  up  the  vegetables. 
He  found  a  shocking  state  of  affairs.  It  appeared  that 
the  detestable  Oriental  was  encouraging  the  vegetables 
by  applying  to  them  liquid  sewage  and  manure. 

This  scandal  got  into  the  front  pages  of  the  newspapers 
the_  very  next  day.  Later  it  was  elaborated,  and  edi 
torials  were  woveiTaround  it,  showing  that  the  Japanese 
and  their  filthy  habits  are  a  menace  to  the  white  race  and 
must  be  driven  out.  Shall  Californians  die  of  typhoid 
that  Japanese  may  get  rich  selling  lettuce  and  onions? 
This  was  no  light  matter.  It  was  soon  taken  up  and 
seriously  discussed  by  editors,  and  even  a  scientific  dis 
sertation  was  written  by  a  young  man  who  was  toiling 
for  a  Ph.D.  degree  at  the  University  of  California. 

For  ten  days  after  the  event  I  carefully  watched 
the  development  of  this  topic  in  the  California  papers. 
Nowhere  did  there  appear  the  obvious  and  crushing 
reply  to  this  vicious  nonsense/  Not  an  editor,  so  far 
as  could  be  seen,  had  enough  interest  in  the  truth  to 
call  attention  to  the  fact  that  all  intensive  farmers  in 
Italy,  Germany,  France,  England,  and  the  LTnited  States 
have  been  applying  all  the  liquid  sewage  and  manure 
they  could  get  to  their  vegetables  ever  since  the  inven 
tion  of  carrots.  Not  an  editor  mentioned  that  the  high 
est  agricultural  experts  recommended  the  praetice./XNot 
an  editor  mentioned  that  what  the  unfortunate  cleaths 
really  meant  was,  not  that  the  Japanese  gardeners  are  a 


258  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

menace,  but  simply  that  some  San  Francisco  kitchen  help 
ers  are  slovens.  /"They  should  have  washed  the  vegetables 
properly,  and  'did  n  't.  Probably  they  were  reading  the 
thrilling  newspaper,  tales  of  murder  and  adultery  while 
rinsing  the  lettuce*/ 

You  may  say  that  this  case  is  trivial.  Taken  by  itself, 
it  is ;  but  it  is  only  one  of  a  million  everyday  acts  which 
make  up  the  habitual  behavior  of  men.  And  this  habit 
ual  behavior  is  the  stuff  that  culture  and  standards  of 
morality  are  made  of. 

w  far  the  Japanese  is  from  such  emotional  habits! 
re  impassive  and  imperturbable  human  being  never 
than  the  average  man  from  Nippon,  unless  it  be 
the  Chinese  coolie.  Unlike  the  upper-class  Japanese, 
who  loves  laughter  and  wit,  the  peasant  is  as  stolid  as 
the  German  countryman.  Insulted,  he  does  not  rage; 
used,  he  seldom  smiles;  exalted,  he  does  not  toss  his 
into  the  air  and  whoop ;  conversed  with,  he  says  no 
more  than  is  needful  to  convey  his  opinion  on  the  mat 
ter  in  hand.  Now  this  can  create  but  one  impression  on 
the.  .white  man ;  to  him  it  means  that  the  Japanese  is  con 
cealing  his  feelings  and  thoughts  for  some  purpose.  For 
the  white  man  cannot  imagine  his  doing  it  unless  there 
were  some  special  reason  to  do  so.  The  Westerner  does 
not  hide  his  feelings  and  impulses  except  when  he  is 
playing  poker.  No  wonder  that  the  Californian  feels 
uneasy  and  suspicious  in  his  dealings  with  the  Japanese ! 
That  is  how  anybody  with  an  expressive  temperament 
must  feel  in  the  presence  of  a  man  whose  face  is  a  mask 
and  whose  words  are  always  few,  polite,  and  precise^) 
f  The  next  contrast  is  one  which  derives  from'the  eco- 

0     nomic  peculiarities  of  California.     Without  checking  up 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       259 

the  statistics  of  the  matter,  we  may  hazard  the  statement 
that  California  is  the  richest  region  in  the  world,  both 
in  potential  resources  per  capita  and  in  the  goods  avail 
able  and  enjoyed  by  her  citizens.  To  get  a  faint  idea  of 
her  high  standard  of  living,  imagine  that  everybody  now 
living  on  the  Atlantic  seaboard  from  Maine  to  Florida 
and  for  one  hundred  miles  inland  were  driven  out,  and 
the  entire  stretch  presented  to  the  inhabitants  of  New 
York  City.  The  happy  profit-sharing  that  would  ensue 
would  resemble  life  in  California  on  its  material  side,  at 
least.  An  even  year-round  climate,  rich  farms,  immense 
grazing-lands  for  sheep  and  cattle,  vast  forests,  an  ocean 
of  fish,  lakes  of  petroleum,  and  many  mines,  all  combine 
to  make  life  easy.  The  cost  of  living  in  California  is 
still  relatively  low,  despite  wars  and  inflations  of  the  once 
honest  dollar.  Both  the  necessities  and  the  luxuries  are 
easy  to  win  as  compared  with  the  East.  The  fortunes 
made  by  California  miners,  farmers,  cattlemen,  and  ship 
builders  since  1914  are  colossal,  and  this  wealth  has  been 
spread  over  more  or  less  the  entire  white  population. 

Now,  such  prosperity  and  easy  living  begets  liberality 
and  free  spending.  It  also  encourages  an  easy-going1  _ 
disposition.  These  very  traits  stood  out  prominent  in 
CalifofnTans  long  before  the  war.  They  doubtless  began 
in  the  days  of  long  ago,  when  the  Argonauts  washed  their 
first  buckets  of  gold  out  of  the  river  sands.  To-day  they 
are  an  integral  part  of  local  culture.  Outside  of  Los 
Angeles,  which  is  not  the  old  California  at  all,  but  simply 
Des  Moines  plus  Charlie  Chaplin,  Californians  are  gen 
erous  and  life-loving  to  a  fault.  The  "treating  habit," 
which  has  all  but  disappeared  in  the  East,  still  prevails. 
Everybody  is  always  dining  out  or  going  somewhere  on 


260  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

a  "hike"  or  a  picnic  or  an  automobile  tour.  On  almost 
any  highway  you  can  come  upon  a  family  in  an  ancient 
flivver  that  is  working  for  a  week  or  two  picking  grapes, 
then  loafing  for  a  spell,  and  jogging  along  the  road 'to 
Elsewhere.  On  the  trains,  everybody  talks  to  everybody 
else,  swaps  pickles  and  chocolate  cake  out  of  their  lunch 
boxes,  and  talks  politics  with  the  conductor.  They  are 
all  of  one  big  family.  They  take  life  fairly  easy,  and 
money,  too.  "While  I  was  visiting  a  small  interior 
town  to  inspect  a  Japanese  settlement,  the  hotel-keeper 
casually  requested  of  me  the  loan  of  a  hundred  dol 
lars  for  three  days.  He  was  buying  a  piece  of  prop 
erty,  and  unexpectedly  found  himself  short  of  the  re 
quired  cash  to  that  amount,  so  he  struck  the  first  guest 
in  sight.  When  he  paid  back  the  loan,  which  he  did  pre 
cisely  when  he  agreed  to,  his  thanks  were  quite  as  casual 
as  the  original  request,  though  freely  expressed.  All  of 
which  indicated  that  he  looked  upon  it  as  natural  and 
proper  for  transient  guests  to  be  thus  free  and  easy  with 
their  funds.  What  's  a  hundred  dollars  between  Califor- 
nians  ? 

^Thrift  simply  does  not  existj.  or  if  it  does,  people  con 
ceal  it  as  though  it  were  a  detestable  vice.  In  fact, 
working  classes  look  down  upon  it  as  disgraceful. 
Around  San  Francisco  you  will  hear  the  scathing  phrase, 
"You  're  as  tight  as  an  Easterner."  This  well  estab 
lished  expression  speaks  volumes,  and  it  throws  light 
upon  the  Calif ornian 's  dislike  of  his  Japanese  visitors. 

For  the  Japanese  is  a  Scotchman  when  it  comes  to 
thrift,  and  he  is  not  a  shade  more  easy-going  than  the 
Russian  Jew.  He  is  "on  the  make."  He  works  from 
eleven  to  sixteen  hours  a  day.  He  eats  plain  food  and 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       261 

little  of  it,  at  least  until  he  has  made  his  pile.  And,  in 
the  words  of  the  old  saw,  he  ' '  saves  his  money  and  buys 
a  farm. ' '  In  all  of  this,  of  course,  he  is  doing  what  most 
of  our  immigrants  from  Europe  do  during  their  first  ten 
years  in  America.  Like  them,  the  Japanese  does  it  for 
the  wholly  laudable  purpose  of  improving  his  lot  in  life 
and  providing  for  his  children.,  /were  he  to  work  in  the 
East,  nobody  would  pay  the  ^lightest  attention  to  these 
habits,  for  the  East  is  familiar  with  them,  is  forced  to 
practise  them,  and  is  moreover  cosmopolitan  in  its  judg 
ments.  But  with  the  Calif ornian  it  is  different,  and  un 
avoidably  so.  These  tight  habits,  which  develop  properly 
in  a  highly  undesirable  habitat  where  people  must  slave 
for  the  necessities  of  life,  are  not  called  for  by  his  en 
vironment.  Hence  they  are  to  the  Californian  unnatu 
ral,  incongruous,  and  undesirable^" 

"We  must  look,  last  of  all,  at  a.  potent  influence  which 
neither  the  Californians  nor  the  Japanese,  so  far  as  I 
know,  have  ever  recognized.  It  is  the  climate.  My  own 
observations  convince  me  that  it  plays  an  important  part 
in  creating  opportunities  for  the  Japanese  and  also  in 
causing  friction. 

Every  Californian  knows,  of  course,  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as-  a  California  climate.  Every  mile  east  and 
west  or  up  and  down  lands  one  in  a  different  weather 
zone.  California  weather  is  like  California  soil — 
11  spotted"  to  a  degree  that  the  Easterner  cannot  real 
ize.  There  are,  however,  certain  large  districts  in  which 
fairly  uniform  conditions  prevail,  and  by  far  the  largest 
of  these  is  the  Great  Valley,  which  embraces  the  immense 
alluvial  plains  of  the  San  Joaquin  and  Sacramento 
Rivers.  As  you  proceed  from  south  to  north  here,  you 


262  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

pass  from  extreme  heat  and  dryness  to  considerable  heat 
and  dryness.  The  winters  are  delightful,  the  summers 
long  and  relentless;  and  the  real  estate  boomer's  familiar 
assurance  that  ''you  don't  feel  the  heat,  because  the  air  Js 
so  dry,  you  know, ' '  never  seems  very  consoling  after  the 
fourth  or  fifth  day. 

Now,  the  bulk  of  Japanese  farmers  will  be  found  in 
the  central  and  southern  parts  of  the  Valley.  And  most 
of  the  others  are  either  around  Los  Angeles  or  else  in  the 
Imperial  Valley,  where  the  climate  is  either  as  hot  as  in 
the  Great  Valley  or  considerably  hotter.  There  they 
thrive  and  are  happy.  There  they  encounter  the  angri 
est  opposition  from  the  small  American  farmers.  As  we 
have  already  seen,  the  trouble  grows  largely  out  of  the 
Japanese  willingness,  if  not  desire,  to  work  from  twelve 
to  sixteen  hours  a  day  when  employed  as  a  farm  hand, 
and  to  make  wife  and  children  do  likewise,  as  soon  as  the 
immigrant  gets  hold  of  a  place  of  his  own.  The  Ameri 
can  farm  hand  resents  being  driven  at  any  such  pace, 
and  the  American  farm  owner  feels  pretty  much  the  same 
way  about  working  his  own  acres.  They  cling  to  a  more 
leisurely  standard  of  living.  And  one-  cause  of  their 
clinging  is  the  peculiar  effect  of  the  climate. 

Those  who  have,  like  Mr.  Ellsworth  Huntington,  stud 
ied  carefully  the  ways  various  temperatures  and  humidi 
ties  influence  the  human  body  and  its  behavior,  have 
often  remarked  upon  the  swift  enervation  induced  by 
excessive  dryness  and  heat.  They  have  also  called  atten 
tion  to  the  slowing  down  of  both  mental  and  physical 
activity  in  climates  of  great  equability.  It  is  surpris 
ingly  easy  to  confirm  these  statements  in  any  of  the  re 
gions  where  the  Japanese  have  settled  thickly.  I  have 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       263 

talked  with  physicians,  newspaper  men,  farmers,  school 
teachers,  clergymen,  and  social  workers  in  San  Bernar 
dino,  Riverside,  Los  Angeles,  Fresno,  Stockton,  and  Sac 
ramento,  as  well  as  in  smaller  places;  and,  with  the 
rather  obvious  exception  of  the  few  professional  boomers 
who  would  honestly  swear  that  every  square  inch  of  the 
grand  old  State  was  just  perfect,  nearly  everybody  testi 
fied  in  one  manner  or  another  to  the  sweet  indolence 
which  California  air  and  sun  breed.  Indeed,  many  per 
sons  insisted  that  this  was  one  of  the  chief  attractions 
of  the  State ;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  is  cor 
rect,  for  certain  types  of  people  who  come  to  enjoy  life  or 
to  recover  their  health. 

' '  The  first  two  years,  I  was  full  of  energy, ' '  is  a  typi 
cal  confession.  "But  after  that  I  wanted  to  take  things 
easy,  and  I  did. ' '  Or,  as  a  Fresno  farmer  puts  it :  "I 
can  stand  just  about  so  many  months  of  it  on  my  ranch. 
Then  I  have  to  light  out  for  San  Francisco,  to  smell  the 
fog  and  get  a  little  ginger  back  into  my  blood."  This 
last,  by  the  way,  is  the  regular  practice  of  the  well-to-do 
ranchers  of  the  Great  Valley.  And  a  botanist  engaged  in 
agricultural  research  for  many  years,  off  and  on,  states 
that  his  journal  always  shows  a  marked  decline  in  the 
amount  of  work  accomplished  after  a  few  months  in 
cloudless  days  of  sun  and  even,  warm  nights. 

All  this  suggests  strongly  that  the  interior  valleys  of  i 
California,  great  and  small  alike,  can  never  be,  in  the  * 
fullest  sense,  a  white  man's  country.     They  come  closer 
to  being  it  than  the  tropics,  of  course ;  and  I  incline  to 
believe  that  they  are  measurably  more  hospitable  to  the 
race  than  the  Gulf  Coast  is.     But,  if  the  white  man  can 
not  do  an  honest  day's  work  in  the  fields,  be  the  season 


264  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

what  it  may,  he  labors  under  a  handicap  that  in  the  long 
run  of  generations  will  surely  deliver  his  rich,  hot  plains 
into  the  hands  of  a  sun-loving  folk,  it  may  be  the  negro, 
the  negroid  Sicilian,  the  Mexican  Indian,  or  the  South 
American.  The  one  tremendous  fact  in  his  favor  is  the 
nearness  of  relief  from  the  heat ;  an  'automobile  run  of  a 
few  hours  lands  him  either  in  the  high  mountains  or  on 
the  chill  seashore.  Yet  it  is  not  the  laborer  who  may 
thus  fly  a  hundred  miles  whenever  he  feels  languid. 
This  is  the  privilege  of  the  rich  land  owner.  Those  who 
till  the  soil  will  ever  be  bound  closely  to  it,  unless  some 
now  inconceivable  invention  makes  travel  as  cheap  as 
sitting  still. 

Now,  the  Japanese  have  not  been  in  the  interior  val- 

,  leys  long  enough  to  warrant  sweeping  conclusions  as  to 
their  fitness  there.  But  we  can  say  that,  as  they  them 
selves  have  boasted,  they  have  gone  into  regions  of  great 

^  heat,  such  as  the  Imperial  Valley  and  the  Delta  country, 
and  have  for  ten  years  or  longer  worked  as  they  used  to 
work  in  cool  Japany^We  can  also  say  that  presumably 
a  small-bodied  stock  like  these  men  and  women  would 
endure  heat  more  readily  than  the  large-boned,  full- 
fleshed  American  type.  Furthermore,  the  Japanese  tend 
to  be  high-strung  and  given  to  driving  themselves  hard. 
It  might  then  fairly  be  supposed  that  a  certain  degree  of 
enervation  would  be  beneficial  to  them.  All  of  which, 
while  proving  nothing,  does  strongly  point  toward  the 
view  that  the  Japanese  are  somewhat  better  fitted  to 
inland  California  than  we  Americans  are.  Whether  this 
is  demonstrable  or  not,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
Japanese  like  the  country  and  have  as  yet  given  no  indi- 


THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  THE  CRISIS       265 

cation  of  an  unfavorable  reaction,  except  in  the  abnormal 
tropic  heat  of  Imperial.  ^Lnd  the  effect  this  has  upon 
their  competition  with  the  white  is  conspicuous^ 

We  might  go  on  and  show  like  contrasts  of  habits  in 
matters  of  domestic  life,  such  as  the  treatment  of  women 
and  children,  in  matters  of  politics  and  religion,  and  so 
on ;  but  we  have  presented  enough  to  make  clear  our  con 
tention  that  it  is  at  many  points  in  the  whole  system  of 
established  habits  of  work  and  play  and  social  intercourse 
that  the  Oriental  and  the  Californian  diverge  with  such 
sharpness  as  to  make  mutual  understanding  exceedingly 
hard. 

Here  the  highest  standard  of  living  in  the  world  and 
one  of  the  lowest  meet  and  compete  in  a  region  which  is 
abundantly  able  to  maintain  the  former.  And  here  the 
most  highly  inbred  Anglo-Saxon  culture  encounters  the 
most  inbred  Mongolian  culture,  with  resulting  divergen 
cies  of  habit  and  judgment  at  almost  every  point. 

We  cannot  deal  with  such  a  conflict  by  asking  which 
culture  is  the  better,  and  then  recommending  the  one  we 
choose.  Men's  habits  remain  unperturbed  in  the  face  of 
such  juggling  of  ideas. 

Nor  can  we  get  ahead  by  relying  upon  any  old  doc 
trines  of  politics  and  diplomacy.  That  method  has 
proved  the  ruin  of  Europe,  and  it  will  bring  disaster 
upon  America  if  we  do  not  stamp  it  out  in  short  order. 
Social  policies  of  the  future  must  be  shaped  more  and 
more  for  the  direct  advantage  of  the  people  in  the  region 
to  which  the  policies  apply.  In  the  face  of  tangible 
and  desired  advantages,  such  catch-phrases  as  "race- 
equality,"  "impartial  justice,"  and  even  "personal  lib- 


266  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

erty"  must  not  prevail.  What  men  need  and  the  world 
in  which  they  must  work  out  their  salvation  are  both  too 
intricate  and  too  subtle  to  be  thought  of,  and  still  less  to 
be  managed,  by  the  vague  ideas  of  political  philosophers 
and  conventional  moralists. 
How,  then,  shall  we  proceed? 


BOOK  IV 
HOW  TO  DEAL  WITH  THE  CRISIS 


CHAPTER  21 

OUR  NATIONAL  POLICY 

ON  WHAT  MUST  IT   BE  BUILT? 

DIFFICULTIES  as  vast  as  those  involved  in  the  Ori 
ental  crisis  cannot  be  overcome  until  the  United 
States  has  worked  out  a  clear  and  sound  national  policy. 
Now,  we  are  not  here  concerned  with  the  bewildering 
task  of  computing  such  a  policy.  That  is  work  for  a 
generation  of  statesmen,  and  we  haven't  the  statesmen 
as  yet.  What  can  and  must  be  done  at  once,  however,  is 
to  bring  together  the  more  obvious  fundamental  facts  on 
which  a  national  policy  must  eventually  be  based,  if  it 
is  to  be  intelligent  and  fair.  "We  shall  speak  here  only 
of  such  facts  as  would  shape  our  policy  in  the  Japanese 
questions. 

These  facts,  as  we  have  indicated,  are  of  two  sorts : 

1. — Facts  about  the  world  as  we  find  it  to-day  and  must 
expect  to  find  it  to-morrow,  and 

2. — Facts  about  the  needs  and  the  desires  of  mankind. 

Could  all  the  important  facts  in  these  two  fields  be  col 
lected  and  clearly  understood,  a  group  of  business  men 
and  experts  in  law,  administration,  and  social  affairs 
could,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years,  work  out  a  pretty  com 
plete  outline  of  a  national  policy.  This  policy  would  be 
nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  technic  of  attaining 
through  governmental  channels  and  by  moral  ways  and 

269 


270  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

means,  everything  that  the  American  people  want  and 
can  get  best  through  such  channels. 

Let  us  see  first  what  the  American  people  need  and 
what  they  desire  over  and  above  strict  needs.  Having 
settled  this  much,  we  shall  proceed  through  the  rest  of 
this  volume  to  inspect  some  of  the  outstanding  conditions 
and  tendencies  in  the  world  in  which  those  needs  and 
desires  must  somehow  find  their  gratification. 

It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  state  emphatically  here 
that  the  study  we  shall  make  of  American  needs  is  purely 
realistic.  We  look  upon  the  appetites  and  desires  of 
the  typical  city-dweller  whose  budget  we  are  going  to 
investigate  in  precisely  the  same  manner  as  a  biologist 
watches  and  records  the  appetites  of  a  rabbit  and  the  im 
pulses  of  a  dog  to  prefer  a  hunk  of  fresh  meat  to  a  dry 
crust  of  bread.  We  make,  for  the  time  being,  the  scien 
tific  assumption  that  the  surest  way  of  discovering  the 
nature  of  man  is  to  watch  minutely  man 's  actual  behavior 
under  the  actual  conditions  of  ordinary  life,  for  man  as 
an  organism  has  developed  his  peculiarities  in  active 
relation  to  this  complex  environment  as  a  whole.  While 
we  may  learn  something  through  a  study  of  some  of  his 
traits  isolated  and  manipulated  under  control  conditions, 
we  learn  most  in  the  other  way. 

This  scientific  assumption  carries  with  it  another  one 
which  is  frequently  overlooked,  especially  by  those  who 
incline  for  one  reason  or  another  to  exalt  the  higher  and 
nobler  traits  of  mankind.  We  assume,  at  least  as  a  mat 
ter  of  sound  procedure  and  first  hypothesis,  that  the  rela 
tive  power  and  consequence  of  man's  many  appetites 
desires,  and  aspirations  is  roughly,  but  most  reliably, 
measured  by  the  degree  to  which  each  of  them  shapes 


OUR  NATIONAL  POLICY  271 

his  actual  behavior  from  moment  to  moment  in  everyday 
affairs.  This  is  the  rule  of  common  sense.  And  it  is 
the  rule  of  all  scientific  approach,  just  because  it  is  the 
simplest  of  all  conceivable  hypotheses.  In  holding  it,  we 
do  not  deny  that  it  may  be  subject  to  many  subsequent 
corrections  as  a  result  of  discoveries.  But  we  do  hold 
that,  until  such  corrections  are  forced  upon  it  by  clear 
scientific  evidences  and  arguments,  it  would  be  highly 
illogical  to  qualify  it. 

From  this  it  follows  that,  until  positive  evidence  to 
the  contrary  has  been  adduced,  we  hold  that  what  any 
American  really  wants  can  be  discovered  approximately 
from  what  he  tries  to  get,  from  how  he  spends  his  time, 
and  from  the  way  he  spends  his  money.  If  there  are 
such  things  as  American  ideals  that  are  genuine  and  not 
mere  talk,  they  will  make  themselves  manifest  in  the 
family  budget  and  in  the  work  and  play  of  father,  mother 
and  children.  If  such  a  family  is  found  to  spend  all  of 
its  income  and  all  of  its  free  time  joy-riding  in  an  ex 
pensive  automobile,  we  shall  not  take  very  seriously  its 
protestations  that  it  is  sincerely  interested  in  helping  the 
starving  Armenians  and  would  like  to  do  something  for 
the  downtrodden  Mexican  peons  if  it  only  could.  Such 
alleged  ideals  we  shall  measure  by  their  actual  efficiency 
in  getting  results. 

This  method,  I  know,  has  seldom  been  followed  by  our 
political  philosophers.  Only  our  ward  politicians  have 
had  the  common  sense  to  adopt  it.  ^Yhen  they  hand 
around  free  turkeys  on  Christmas  and  give  the  boys  of 
the  neighborhood  jobs,  they  disclose  a  correct  under 
standing  of  what  people  expect  of  the  Government  and 
its  laws.  They  want  results.  They  want  them,  first  of 


272  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

all,  in  the  form  of  food  and  jobs  that  pay  well.    And  in 
this  they  are  wholly  right. 

Our  political  philosophers  have  been  telling  us  for 
many  years  that  men  are  passionately  devoted  to  liberty. 
The  whole  record  of  the  war  proves  that  they  are  not. 
They  will  cling  to  any  despot  or  scoundrel  who  gives 
them  plenty  of  food  and  a  warm  suit  of  clothes ;  and,  as 
every  observer  in  Central  Europe  to-day  testifies,  the 
masses  would  gladly  go  on  living  off  the  bounty  of  the 
American  relief  societies  indefinitely  and  allow  us  to  do 
as  we  pleased  with  their  shadowy  political  rights,  so  long 
as  the  daily  dole  was  forthcoming.  They  are  all  like  the 
English  sailor  I  met  aboard  a  freighter  docking  at  Mon 
treal.  To  the  officer  who  asked  him  his  nationality,  he 
said:  "  I  'm  from  Lunnon,  mate.  But  my  country  is 
the  one  that  gives  me  the  best  berth." 

Whoever  dares  look  the  facts  unabashed  in  the  face 
finds  a  similar  state  of  affairs  in  every  other  classic  po 
litical  ideal  from  democracy  down  to  religious  freedom. 
In  real  life,  men  use  democratic  forms  only  as  a  means 
to  attain  or  to  retain  some  simple  desired  set  of  daily 
habits;  and  they  tolerate  a  degree  of  religious  freedom 
only  in  so  far  as  the  practice  of  it  does  not  interfere  with 
their  own  elemental  ways  of  life,  as  our  suppression  of 
Mormon  polygamy  and  Christian  Science  treatment  of 
contagious  diseases  has  proved. 

Endless  confusion  has  grown  out  of  the  pleasant  and 
courteous  habit  of  believing  that  people  mean  what  they 
say.  The  man  of  intellectual  inclinations  always  falls 
victim  to  this  error.  To  him  words  and  ideas  are  impor 
tant.  Out  of  them  he  erects  glittering  systems  and 
theories.  The  statesman,  however,  must  regard  the  utter- 


OUR  NATIONAL  POLICY  273 

ances  of  mankind  precisely  as  the  biologist  and  psycholo 
gist  do,  namely,  as  partial  symptoms  of  a  physical  and 
mental  condition  which  is  fully  revealed — if  ever — 
only  through  the  human  behavior  of  him  who  speaks. 

AMERICAN   NEEDS 

It  is  an  established  fact  that  what  any  man  needs  is 
determined  within  a  wide  range  by  where  he  lives,  by  the 
kind  of  work  he  is  doing,  and  by  the  number  of  social 
influences  that  operate  to  compel  him  to  maintain  certain 
standards  of  conduct.  The  true  needs  of  a  negro  farmer 
in  Georgia  differ  widely  from  those  of  a  shipyard  worker 
in  San  Francisco ;  so  it  would  be  hard  to  strike  an  aver 
age,  and  harder  yet  to  assert  that  such  an  average  rep 
resented  anything  real.  There  is  one  thing  that  we  can 
do,  however,  and  that  is  to  choose  the  needs  of  the  largest 
American  class  that  has  been  carefully  studied  and  to 
let  this  stand  as  more  or  less  typical.  Fortunately,  we 
have  at  hand  excellent  material  of  this  sort  in  the  many 
analyses  of  workingmen's  budgets  which  have  been  made 
by  various  investigators.  In  the  Appendix  you  will  find 
a  number  of  these  brought  together  and  contrasted  with 
one  another,  as  well  as  with  Japanese  budgets;  and  of 
these  we  shall  choose  one  of  the  most  recent,  namely,  a 
study  of  "the  cost  of  maintaining  a  family  at  a  level  of 
health  and  reasonable  comfort"  which  was  prepared  by 
W.  Jett  Lauck  and  presented  before  the  United  States 
Railway  Labor  Board  in  1920.  This  investigation  was 
carried  out  in  the  interests  of  the  railway  workeis'  unions 
as  a  part  of  their  effort  to  gain  an  increase  of  wages.  It 
is  a  careful  piece  of  work  and  throws  light  upon  that 
vague  thing  called  the  "American  standard  of  living/' 


274  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Doubtless  it  will  seem  strange  to  many  readers  that 
we  should  drag  into  the  Japanese  question  the  number 
and  the  cost  of  a  woman's  stockings  and  hats,  but  as  a 
matter  of  history  and  human  psychology  it  can  be  dem 
onstrated  that  stockings  and  hats  play  an  important 
part  in  the  settling  of  such  international  problems. 

We  may  say  more.  These  are  the  things  that  have 
made  the  United  States  what  it  is. 

The  whole  trend  of  immigration  proves  that  America 
means  to  the  masses  of  mankind  nothing  more  than  a 
standard  of  living.  We  find  it  is  the  chance  of  improv 
ing  their  food,  clothing,  shelter,  and  leisure  that  draws 
men  to  our  gates.  In  almost  exact  proportion  to  the 
superiority  of  American  jobs  and  basic  commodities  over 
the  jobs  and  commodities  available  in  other  lands  does 
the  volume  of  immigration  flow.  The  exceptions  to  this 
rule  are  too  slight  to  be  considered  here. 

Why  did  America  before  the  war  no  longer  attract  the 
British  and  Scotch  and  Germans?  Because  living  con 
ditions  had  steadily  improved  in  those  countries,  on  the 
whole,  until  the  advantages  to  be  gained  by  a  worker  in 
shifting  to  America  were  more  than  offset  by  the  expense 
and  difficulties  of  moving  thousands  of  miles  to  a  strange 
land  and  probably  having  to  take  up  work  at  first  in  a 
line  in  which  he  had  not  been  trained.  WThy  did  the 
Sicilian,  the  Greek,  the  Ruthenian,  and  the  further  Slavs 
pour  in  faster  and  faster?  Because  the  immense  differ 
ence  between  the  amount  of  bread  and  meat  and  wages 
within  their  reach  at  home  and  the  amount  obtainable  in 
our  mines  and  mills  made  the  migration  worth  while,  in 
spite  of  its  cost  and  hazards.  Why  to-day  do  the  Irish, 
British,  Germans,  and  even  French  again  clamor  for  ad- 


OUR  NATIONAL  POLICY  275 

mission?  Does  any  sane  man  think  it  is  because  they 
believe  that  we  stand  for  some  higher  political,  ethical, 
or  cultural  ideal  ?  Certainly  not.  It  it  nothing  but  the 
primitive  appetite  for  a  full  stomach  and  short  working 
hours  and  a  chance  to  have  some  pleasure  that  sets  the 
hordes  in  motion. 

Some  political  exhorters  and  after-dinner  speakers  may 
talk  glowingly  of  the  lure  of  Liberty.  But  the  immi 
grant  himself  knows  better.  During  the  past  years  I 
have  sent  more  than  one  hundred  young  reporters  to 
Ellis  Island  from  time  to  time,  to  talk  with  the  incoming 
multitude;  and,  among  other  things,  they  have  asked 
about  motives.  Aside  from  those  immigrants  who  come 
ostensibly  to  join  their  near  and  dear  relatives,  nearly 
all  say  the  same  thing :  it  is  big  pay  and  better  food  that 
draws  them.  Personally  I  have  yet  to  hear  of  a  man  or 
woman  who  confessed  coming  hither  because  of  our  po 
litical  or  other  standards  and  practices.  No  doubt  there 
may  be  a  few  such,  as  there  were  in  the  old  days  when 
the  German  '48-ers  fled  hither.  But  they  get  lost  in  the 
torrent  of  perfectly  simple  and  natural  humans  moving 
under  the  spur  of  hunger. 

These  elemental  needs  are  the  things  which,  as  much  as 
any  other  single  factor,  have  made  Americans  indifferent 
to  the  League  of  Nations,  to  the  Japanese  crisis,  to  the 
woes  of  China,  and  almost  everything  else  in  the  field  of 
international  relations.  Every  experienced  political  ob 
server  from  Maine  to  California  who  listened  to  folks  talk 
during  the  recent  Presidential  campaign  knows  that  they 
have  precious  little  interest  in  most  of  the  sonorous  sub 
jects  dwelt  upon  by  either  Harding  or  Cox.  They  have 
only  one  overshadowing  interest,  and  that  is  in  cutting 


276  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

the  high  cost  of  living,  and  cutting  it  in  a  hurry.  They 
all  want  to  get  back  to  the  "good  old  days"  of  1910  as 
fast  as  the  hands  of  the  clock  can  be  turned  back.  They 
are  absorbed  in  the  problem  of  the  family  budget.  Give 
them  a  politician  who  can  cope  with  the  family  budget, 
and  they  will  follow  him  through  fire  and  flood.  Let  a 
President  get  into  the  White  House  who  fails  to  make  at 
least  a  respectable  try  at  getting  a  strangle-hold  on  the 
monster,  and  he  will  stir  up  a  wave  of  discontent  that 
will  overwhelm  him  and  his  party. 

If  you  wish  proof  that  the  politicians  themselves  under 
stand  this,  read  the  "Congressional  Record"  for  Decem 
ber,  1920.  A  month  after  Mr.  Harding  was  elected  by 
the  largest  vote  ever  cast  for  a  President,  what  is  it  that 
our  statesmen  are  concerning  themselves  with?  Three 
subjects.  Taxes,  immigration,  and  relief  for  the  farm 
ers  !  What 's  wrong  with  taxes  ?  They  keep  the  cost  of 
production  up  and  hence  the  cost  of  living.  What's 
wrong  with  immigration  ?  The  workingmen  know  that  a 
great  influx  of  raw  alien  laborers  will  force  their  own 
wages  down  much  faster  than  the  cost  of  living  will  drop ; 
while  the  small  farmers  know  that,  if  this  incoming  horde 
is  diverted  to  farms,  as  some  well  meaning  but  ill  in 
formed  citizens  wish,  the  American  tiller  of  the  soil  will 
be  driven  out  on  a  grand  scale  by  cheap  competition,  pre 
cisely  as  to-day  he  is  being  driven  out  by  the  thousands 
in  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Ohio,  and  California.  And 
why  relief  for  the  farmers?  Because,  according  to  the 
best  estimates  by  financial  experts,  the  value  of  farm 
crops  has  declined  between  six  and  eight  billion  dollars 
in  the  past  season,  the  major  crops  have  this  year  been 
grown  at  a  heavy  loss  to  the  farmers,  who  still  represent 


OUR  NATIONAL  POLICY  277 

nearly  half  of  our  total  population;  and  this  is  serious 
in  view  of  the  fact — which  city  folk  seem  unable  to  grasp 
— that  seven  farmers  out  of  ten  are  still  earning  less  than 
a  second-rate  union  laborer  in  a  small  town. 

In  short,  Congress  is  giving  its  best  attention  to  the 
real  problem  of  Americanism,  which  is  a  standard  of 
living.  Whatever  the  intelligence  of  our  Congressmen 
may  be,  their  instincts  are  fairly  sure  in  scenting  out  the 
real  issues  of  life.  They  know,  what  so  many  philoso- 
phizers  do  not,  that  there  is  nothing  of  greater  impor 
tance  in  our  understanding  and  framing  a  national  policy 
than  the  hats  and  stockings  and  meat  and  potatoes  which 
all  of  us  want  and  most  of  us  get. 

Now  for  a  glance  at  what  we  Americans  actually  need. 
Mr.  Lauck  has  brought  together  the  budgets  of  280  fam 
ilies  in  Washington.  The  heads  of  these  families  are  all 
employed  in  some  clerical  capacity  in  Government  de 
partments.  The  average  family  size  is  five — husband, 
wife,  and  three  children.  As  you  glance  over  the  items 
of  expenditure  in  the  Appendix,  you  will  find  that  only 
a  few  small  ones  go  for  anything  that  is  not  at  most  uni 
versally  regarded  by  city  dwellers  to-day  as  necessities 
or  semi-necessities.  Simple  food,  plain  clothing,  the  rent 
of  the  most  modest  house  or  apartment,  laundry,  doctor's 
bill,  and  insurance — these  constitute  fully  nine-tenths  of 
the  annual  outlay.  And  this  total  outlay  amounts  to 
$2,533.97. 

So  far  as  money  cost  goes,  this  is  one  of  the  highest  of 
workers'  budgets;  but  the  good  things  it  provides  are 
essentially  the  same  as  those  enjoyed,  more  or  less  abun 
dantly,  by  the  millions  of  union  laborers  and  clerical 
workers  all  over  the  United  States.  We  shall  not  go  far 


278  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

wrong  if  we  take  it  as  typifying  the  present-day  Ameri 
can  city  dweller 's  standard  of  living  and  hence  the  ideal 
toward  which  all  less  fortunate  workers,  rural  and  urban, 
are  aspiring. 

What,  we  must  next  ask,  are  the  effects  of  the  struggle 
upward  toward  this  level  of  existence? 

DIFFUSION   OF   LIVING   HABITS 

Two  things  happen  when  those  Americans  who  are 
living  on  a  level  below  that  of  the  ordinary  city  worker 
find  the  opportunities  and  habits  of  the  latter  attractive 
and  strive  toward  them. 

1. — Rural  Americans  who  are  able  to  afford  such  hab 
its  in  their  own  country  districts  bring  the  means  of  en 
joyment  thither.  Thus  we  see  to-day  in  all  our  more 
prosperous  farming  communities,  automobiles,  motion- 
picture  shows,  "New  York  stores,"  parks,  band  concerts, 
etc.  And  on  the  prosperous  isolated  farms  we  see  all 
manner  of  city  improvements,  from  electric  lights  up  to 
parlor  movies. 

2. — Rural  Americans  unable  to  bring  such  means  of 
enjoyment  to  their  own  homes  become  dissatisfied  and 
tend  to  drift  to  the  cities. 

How  huge  this  drift  has  become  nobody  realized  until 
the  reports  of  the  last  census  began  appearing ;  and  then 
even  those  who  had  been  making  high  estimates  discov 
ered  that  they  had  been  too  conservative  with  figures. 
In  the  ten  years  from  1910  to  1920  the  country  districts 
of  the  United  States  grew  in  population  only  one  third 
as  rapidly  as  in  the  previous  decade.  During  the  same 
period  of  rural  decline,  our  cities  grew  25.2  per  cent,  or 
eight  times  as  fast  as  our  farming  regions,  and  nearly 


OUR  NATIONAL  POLICY  279 

six  times  as  fast  as  our  villages.  In  these  ten  years  we 
have  added  about  14,000,000  people  to  our  numbers,  and 
virtually  all  of  this  horde  have  been  absorbed  by  the 
large  towns.  No  other  two  countries  in  the  world  have 
so  many  cities  as  we  now  have. 

Every  student  of  farm  life  knows  that  this  present  co 
lossal  migration  from  country  to  town  is  not  economic 
in  the  narrow  sense  of  the  word.  It  is,  as  Elwood  Mead 
accurately  points  out,  largely  a  psychological  impulse. 
It  is  the  very  human  desire  to  enjoy  all  the  good 
things  of  life  that  the  other  fellow  enjoys,  to  be  where 
one  can  talk  with  people,  see  new  things  every  day, 
drop  into  the  movies  at  odd  times,  play  pool,  see  a  ball 
game,  and  so  on.  Many  a  young  man  has  given  up  a 
five-dollar-a-day  job  as  farm-hand  to  take  a  four-dollar- 
a-day  job  in  a  town  where  board-bills  and  car-fares  eat 
up  more  of  his  wages  in  a  week  than  he  used  to  spend  in 
a  fortnight,  and  all  because  of  this  tremendous  urge  to 
be  civilized.  To  be  civilized  means  to  be  "citified''  to 
day  no  less  than  when  the  Romans  invented  the  word, 
and  those  who  condemn  the  rush  to  the  cities  often  over 
look  the  fact  that,  despite  many  undesirable  aspects  of 
large-town  life,  on  the  whole  it  comes  closer  to  realizing 
the  ideals  of  civilization  than  does  any  other  way  of  life 
that  is  to-day  within  reach  of  the  masses. 

This  last  qualification  is  most  important.  It  forces 
upon  us  the  conclusion  that  if  for  any  good  reason  this 
townward  rush  must  be  checked,  there  can  be  only  one 
way  to  check  it;  and  that  is  to  make  it  possible  for  the 
rural  masses  to  enjoy  the  urban  standard  of  living  in 
the  country.  To-day  at  least  eight  out  of  every  ten 
American  rural  dwellers  are  financially  unable  to  do  this. 


280  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Plainly,  then,  we  are  here  confronted  with  a  fact  and  a 
problem  that  must  figure  heavily  in  our  national  policy. 
Had  we  the  space  here,  we  might  point  out  several  mo 
mentous  tendencies  in  American  life  which  are  forcing 
up  the  living  habits  of  thousands  of  people  far  beyond 
the  level  of  the  Lauck  budget.  We  might,  for  example, 
show  what  the  automobile  and  good  roads  are  doing  in 
the  way  of  creating  new  habits  of  daily  work,  of  business, 
and  of  recreation  which  can  never  be  broken  down  with 
out  a  grave  crisis.  Or  we  might  dwell  on  the  rapidly  ris 
ing  standards  of  public  health  and  personal  hygiene,  all 
immensely  stimulated  by  the  war  and  setting  up  new 
habits  of  cleanliness,  sanitation,  and  exercise  that  strike 
deep  into  our  common  life.  Or  again  we  might  report 
the  amazing  new  appetite  for  higher  education  that  has 
sprung  up,  seemingly  overnight,  as  a  consequence  of  the 
war  and  our  post-war  prosperity.  Tens  of  thousands 
of  young  men  and  women  discovered  during  the  war 
that  it  was  the  trained  men  who  rose  fastest  from  the 
ranks  and  won  responsibilities  and  honors.  The  cash 
value  of  a  sound  schooling  was  suddenly  made  apparent ; 
and  at  the  same  time  our  industrial  boom  brought  to 
innumerable  homes  ample  funds  to  send  the  boys  and 
girls  to  college.  To-day  our  universities  and  technical 
schools  are  literally  turning  away  students  for  lack  of 
teachers  and  lack  of  room  to  handle  them.  It  requires 
no  prophetic  vision  to  state  that  the  effect  of  this  new 
diffusion  of  higher  learning  will  within  twenty-five  years 
drive  our  American  standards  of  living  still  higher.  But 
all  of  these  influences  must  be  left  out  of  account  for  the 
present,  immense  though  they  are.  Without  them  we 


OUR  NATIONAL  POLICY  281 

have  more  than  enough  facts  on  which  to  base  a  national 
policy. 

MAINTAINING    AN    ACCEPTED    STANDARD    OF    LIVING   IS   THE 
ONLY   MORAL   BASIS   OP  A   NATIONAL   POLICY 

Men  may  talk  about  all  sorts  of  fine  ideals,  such  as  up 
lifting  Asia  or  running  the  League  of  Nations  as  being 
"America's  first  duty."  But  such  talk  is  either  loose 
rhetoric  or  else  gross  ignorance.  The  thing  we  loosely 
call  "American  life,"  which  is  in  reality  a  complex  of 
several  hundred  habits,  most  of  which  are  bred  into  us 
before  we  are  twenty  years  old,  is  as  stable  a  thing  as 
Chinese  life  or  the  Hindu's  ways.  It  resists  changes  in 
the  way  of  deprivations  with  a  stubbornness  that  is  un 
believable.  Its  demands  take  precedence  over  all  else. 
Once  grasp  this,  and  you  will  realize  that  it  is  the  ulti 
mate  fact  on  which  all  politics  and  statecraft  must  build. 

In  this  we  are  not  a  whit  different  from  anybody  else. 
A  glance  at  the  food  habits  of  other  people  reveals  the 
same  inflexibility  of  elemental  appetite.  Thus  the  tan 
gible  evidences  prove  that  the  European  loves  wheat  even 
more  than  peace,  and  white  bread  more  passionately 
than  democracy. 

Wheat  affords  a  startling  demonstration  of  the  white 
man's  rising  standard  of  living  and  the  extent  to  which 
his  desire  for  maintaining  that  standard  shapes  his  per 
sonal  and  political  conduct.  As  far  back  as  1898,  the 
growing  appetite  of  Europeans  for  this  grain  had  be 
come  evident  and  disquieting.  In  that  year  Sir  William 
Crookes,  the  eminent  British  scientist,  reported  to  the 
British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science  that 


282  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

"Of  late  years  the  individual  consumption  of  wheat  has  al 
most  universally  increased.  In  Scandinavia  it  has  risen  100% 
in  25  years;  in  Austria-Hungary  80%;  in  France  20%;  while 
in  Belgium  it  has  increased  50%.  Only  in  Russia  and  Italy, 
and  possibly  Turkey,  has  it  declined. 

"In  1871  the  bread-eaters  of  the  world  numbered  371,000,000. 
In  1881  the  numbers  rose  to  416,000,000;  in  1891  to  472,600,- 
000,  and  at  the  present  time  (1898)  they  number  516,500,000." 

This  same  authority,  in  the  same  report,  ventured  the 
prediction  that  by  1921  on  the  basis  of  a  per  capita  con 
sumption  for  food  and  for  seed  of  four  and  a  half  bush 
els  a  year,  the  world  crop  would  be  3,033,000,000  bushels. 
How  conservative  this  estimate  was  appears  from  the  fact 
that  the  wheat  crop  crossed  four  billion  bushels  as  early 
as  1913  !  And  the  demand  is  still  insatiable. 

As  is  well  known,  it  was  this  clamor  for  wheat  in  Eu 
rope  that  was  chiefly  responsible  for  our  own  Food  Ad 
ministration's  polic}^  toward  that  staple  during  the  war. 
Impartial  observers  testified  pretty  generally  that  the 
peoples  of  western  Europe  had  become  so  addicted  to 
wheat  bread  that,  if  deprived  of  it  suddenly,  even  under 
the  stress  of  war,  both  their  digestion  and  their  morale 
would  suffer  dangerously.  Accordingly,  Mr.  Hoover 
concentrated  largely  upon  the  task  of  supplying  the 
Allies  with  wheat.  It  would  have  been  much  easier  to 
have  sent  corn  or  even  rye;  but  twenty-five  years  of 
efforts  on  the  part  of  American  cereal  manufacturers 
have  failed  to  cultivate  in  Europeans  a  taste  for  Johnny 
cake  and  mush,  while,  as  for  rye,  western  Europe  has 
been  steadily  turning  away  from  that  form  of  food  for 
a  generation.  So  we  denied  ourselves  a  little  and  sent 
our  wheat. 


OUR  NATIONAL  POLICY  283 

Proof  of  the  very  same  fierce  conservatism  of  Ameri 
can  life  has  been  set  forth  by  Raymond  Pearl.  Mr. 
Pearl  was  in  charge  of  the  statistical  department  of  the 
United  States  Food  Administration.  He  made  an  ex 
haustive  study  of  the  way  Americans  responded  to  the 
slogan,  '  *  Food  will  win  the  war,  save  it ! "  Now,  if  there 
is  any  one  thing  that  would  be  certain,  it  is  that  millions 
of  American  families  had  an  intense  personal  interest  in 
winning  the  war,  and  that  in  the  shortest  time  possible. 
Four  million  of  the  finest  young  men  went  from  these 
homes  to  France.  Victory  was  a  matter  of  life  and 
death  to  them,  and  joy  or  misery  to  their  parents  and 
relatives.  Never  in  our  national  history  was  there  a 
mightier  incentive  to  strive  and  to  sacrifice  and  to  en 
dure.  Now,  what  happened  ? 

The  Food  Administration's  own  figures  show  that  the 
American  people  did  not  change  their  eating  habits  to 
any  appreciable  extent  during  the  war.  They  reduced 
some  items  of  food,  but  for  every  such  reduction  they  in 
creased  others,  so  that  the  peace-time  quantity  was  con 
sumed.  In  short,  men's  eating  habits  cannot  be  sup 
pressed  even  by  the  desire  to  win  a  war  except  in  so  far 
as  some  pressure  from  without  forces  them. 

The  whole  history  of  the  progressive  strictness  and 
drastic  control  of  the  Food  Administration  confirms  this 
psychological  law.  That  administration  began  its  work 
with  simple  exhortations.  Men  listened,  applauded,  and 
went  on  eating.  The  administration  regulated  the  gro 
cers.  Both  customers  and  grocers  evaded  the  rules  with 
a  thousand  pretexts.  The  administration  finally  found  it 
necessary  to  regulate  the  sources  of  supply  and  impose 
penalties.  Then,  of  course,  the  habits  cf  eating  certain 


284  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

kinds  of  food-stuffs,  such  as  sugar  and  wheat  flour,  were 
effectively  controlled  in  the  cities,  though  never  in  the 
country  districts  any  more  than  they  were  in  Germany. 
But  the  checking  of  sugar  and  flour  habits  did  not  reduce 
the  total  food  quantities  consumed  at  all,  as  Pearl  shows. 

From  a  detailed  analysis  of  the  food  consumed  in  all 
America  from  1911  to  1918,  he  finds  that  we  get  more 
than  half  of  our  protein  from  animal  sources  (not  in 
cluding  fish)  and  "in  spite  of  propaganda  from  dietary 
cranks  and  from  commercial  interests  it  is  clear  that  the 
American  people  depend  to  an  overwhelming  degree 
upon  animal  sources  for  their  fat  intake,  rather  than 
upon  vegetable  oils,  nuts,  and  the  like."  Millions  of 
dollars  have  been  spent  in  advertising  vegetarianism  and 
patent  foods  heralded  as  substitutes  for  animal  fats ;  yet 
no  noteworthy  impression  has  been  made  upon  the  pub 
lic.  Pearl  further  observes  that  "the  price  of  meat  may 
rise  relatively  much  more  than  that  of  fruits  or  fish 
without  leading  to  any  reduction  in  consumption,  owing 
to  the  general  belief  that  meat  is  a  more  necessary  article 
of  diet  than  the  other  two  sorts  of  food  mentioned. ' '  In 
passing,  I  would  suggest  that  the  persistence  of  meat 
eating  is  not  due  so  much  to  false  notions  about  its  im 
portance  as  it  is  to  simple  hankering  and  habit.  Many 
people  know  perfectly  well  that  meat  is  not  essential  to 
health  but  go  on  eating  it  because  it  tastes  so  much  better 
than  most  substitutes. 

We  cannot  exaggerate  the  importance  of  all  this.  It 
proves,  as  was  said  before,  that  we  are  just  as  set  in  our 
ways  as  the  Chinaman  is;  and  that,  taking  peoples  by 
the  millions,  nothing  short  of  a  catastrophe  will  cause 
them  to  abandon  a  simple  life  habit ;  and  that,  when  they 


OUR  NATIONAL  POLICY  285 

do  abandon  one  under  pressure,  grave  disturbances  are 
sure  to  follow.  Such  disturbances  would  not  necessarily 
be  fatal,  nor  would  they  continue  indefinitely ;  but  they 
would  spread  over  the  entire  country,  and  infect  every 
day  life  at  a  thousand  points. 

Plainly,  then,  it  must  be  a  part  of  our  national  policy 
to  prevent  changes  in  such  group  habits  which  are  not 
injurious  in  themselves  except  when  the  advantages  to 
be  gained  by  such  a  change  offset  the  irritations,  confu 
sions,  and  loss  of  time,  money,  and  morale  which  the 
change  must  cause. 

HOW   FAR   AHEAD    SHOULD    WE   PLAN  FOR   SUPPLYING    THE 
NEEDS  OF  OUR   LIFE   HABITS? 

When  an  intelligent  American  working-man  marries, 
he  begins  to  provide  in  one  manner  or  another  for  his 
future.  First,  he  takes  out  life  insurance  to  protect  his 
wife ;  then  he  saves  money  to  buy  a  home.  When  chil 
dren  come,  he  makes  further  efforts  to  lay  aside  funds 
against  the  day,  many  years  off,  when  his  Ned  is  ready 
and  eager  to  go  to  college  and  become  an  engineer,  and 
his  Mary  wants  to  study  nursing.  Father  and  mother 
husband  their  resources  and  exert  themselves  to  increase 
the  family  income  to  this  end,  and  it  is  not  at  all  un 
common  for  them  to  plan  twenty  years  ahead. 

Now,  would  it  not  seem  that  the  State  should  do  at 
least  as  much  for  its  citizens  in  the  way  of  foresight  and 
planning  as  a  pair  of  normally  thrifty  parents  would  for 
their  children  ?  Would  not  the  very  crudest  type  of  na 
tional  policy  provide  for  the  future  needs  of  all  the 
people  who  are  alive  when  that  policy  is  formed  and 
adopted?  In  comparison  with  the  scope  of  the  national 


286  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

policies  which  many  eminent  politicians,  international 
bankers,  and  idealists  have  lately  been  urging  us  to  em 
brace,  this  one  seems  pitifully  meager  and  narrow.  Sup 
pose,  though,  that  we  were  to  pursue  it  consistently. 
Whither  would  it  lead  us?  The  answer  is  startling. 

On  the  day  that  these  lines  are  being  written,  December 
31,  1920,  thousands  of  babies  are  being  born  in  American 
homes,  and  of  this  multitude  several  thousand  will  live 
to  the  age  of  eighty  years.  They  will  celebrate  New 
Year's  Day,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  2000.  Let  us  be 
sufficiently  interested  in  the  upbringing  and  the  happi 
ness  of  these,  our  youngest  fellow-citizens,  to  begin  plan 
ning  to-day  that  they  may  have,  their  lives  through,  at 
least  as  many  of  the  necessities  and  good  things  as  a 
Government  clerk  in  Washington  enjoys  to-day. 

At  the  very  outset  of  our  planning,  we  must  ask  the 
following  questions : 

1.  What  are  the  prospects  that  those  Americans  will 
have  at  least  as  good  food  and  as  much  of  it  as  the  Wash 
ington  clerk  to-day  has? 

2.  What  steps  must  be  taken  now  to  make  it  reason 
ably  sure  that  he  will  have  such  food  in  the  year  2000  ? 

3.  What  are  the  prospects  that  those  Americans  will 
be  earning  wages  that  will  buy  in  the  markets  of  that 
day  the  meat,  fish,  milk,  eggs,  fruits,  sugar,  house  furni 
ture,  fuel,  laundry,  soap,  doctor's  services,  and  all  the 
other  hundred  and  one  items  which  the  Washington  clerk 
of  to-day  enjoys  ? 

4.  What  steps  must  be  taken  to  make  it  reasonably  cer 
tain  that  they  will  be  able  to  earn  such  wages  ? 

5.  What  are  the  prospects  that  those  Americans  will 
have  clubs,  societies,  churches,  theaters,  and,  above  all, 


OUR  NATIONAL  POLICY  287 

neighbors  at  least  as  agreeable  and  satisfactory  as  those 
now  enjoyed  by  the  Washington  clerk  ? 

6.  What  steps  must  be  taken  now  to  make  it  reason 
ably  sure  that  he  will  have  these? 

7.  Wliat  are  the  prospects  that  those  Americans  will 
enjoy  at  least  the  same  degree  of  health  and  happiness  in 
2000  as  the  Washington  clerk  now  does? 

8.  What  steps  must  be  taken  now  to  make  it  reason 
ably  sure  that  they  will  enjoy  that  much? 

These  are  the  real  and  the  deep  problems  under 
neath  every  intelligent  national  policy.  The  nation  that 
asks  such  questions  of  its  own  citizens  and  does  its  best 
to  solve  them  has  a  sound  statecraft,  and,  other  things 
being  equal,  will  succeed  where  other  less  far-sighted  na 
tions  perish.  These  questions  it  is  which  the  statesmen 
of  Japan  are  facing  and  working  over  night  and  day. 
We  may  disapprove  of  the  feudalism  of  the  Elder 
Statesmen  in  fine  democratic  phrases,  we  may  condemn 
the  Prussianized  militarists  of  Tokio,  we  may  despise 
the  Japanese  peasant's  low  standard  of  living  and  his 
simple  life  habits;  but  we  cannot  refrain  from  admir 
ing  the  intelligent  persistence  with  which  Japan  is  or 
ganizing  all  her  forces  to  find  work  and  agreeable  homes 
for  her  seventy  millions  and  their  children.  Her  rulers 
clearly  recognize  that  the  first  law  of  life  is  to  go  on  liv 
ing,  and  the  second  law  of  life  is  to  live  better  in  the 
future  than  in  the  past,  if  that  can  be  managed.  We 
shall  do  well  to  give  it  a  trial. 

In  the  following  chapters  answers  will  be  sought  for 
the  questions  we  have  asked.  We  shall  look  into  the  fu 
ture  of  the  world 's  food  supply  and  the  American  farmer. 
We  shall  study  the  tendency  of  races  and  populations  to 


288  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

fill  the  earth.  Having  done  which  in  brief  form,  we 
shall  then  apply  our  findings  to  the  shaping  of  a  na 
tional  policy  which  plays  fair  to  all  the  infants  now  cry 
ing  in  American  cradles  and  fair  to  the  hungry  millions 
of  the  Orient. 

Obviously,  a  national  policy  has  not  been  completed 
as  soon  as  we  have  found  ways  and  means  of  supplying 
all  our  citizens,  present  and  future,  with  food,  clothes, 
shelter,  and  the  simple  pleasures  and  luxuries-  indicated 
in  the  Washington  clerk's  family  budget.  All  these  are 
the  indispensable  beginning  of  a  sound  national  policy, 
but  they  are  not  the  last  word.  For  one  thing,  there  are 
some  habits  now  present  and  active  in  American  life 
which  must  be  broken  down  if  we  are  to  advance  and 
prosper.  They  are  too  numerous  and  too  difficult  to  con 
sider  in  a  study  like  the  present  one;  but  there  are  two 
among  them  which  are  so  intimately  connected  with  the 
Japanese  crisis  that  we  must  give  them  some  considera 
tion,  albeit  cursory.  One  of  these  is  the  old  habit  of 
racial  segregation.  The  other  is  the  habit  of  letting  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  human  beings  come  here  to  live 
without  regard  to  the  ease  or  obstinacy  with  which  they 
fit  into  our  social  and  political  life.  There  is  little  sense 
in  talking  about  a  national  policy  until  we  have  become 
a  nation,  and  in  some  important  respects  we  still  fall 
short  of  being  that.  This  deficiency  underlies  many  of 
our  political  troubles  and  figures  broadly  in  our  relations 
to  Japan.  So,  after  a  survey  of  the  more  immediate  fac 
tors  in  our  Oriental  crisis,  we  shall  look  briefly  at  the 
problems  of  Americanization  and  immigration. 


CHAPTER  22 

THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  TO-DAY  AXD  TO-MORROW 

WE  have  just  been  looking  at  a  serious  effort  to 
compute  the  details  and  the  cost  of  a  standard 
of  living  which  is  believed  by  thousands  of  people  to 
be  the  lowest  mode  of  existence  in  which  they  can  be 
moderately  contented.  This  computation  of  Mr.  Lauck'3 
ceases  to  be  a  dull  piece  of  statistics  the  instant  we  ask 
what  it  means  and  implies  precisely  in  terms  of  world 
production  and  consumption.  Suppose  we  were  to  pass 
laws  to-morrow  which  guaranteed  to  every  American  the 
many  items  in  Mr.  Lauck's  list.  What  would  happen? 
It  can  be  told  in  a  word.  .In  the  first  place,  the  produc 
tion  of  food  and  basic  supplies  would  have  to  be  more 
than  doubled  at  once ;  and  in  the  second  place,  this  could 
not  be  accomplished,  even  if  the  total  wealth  now  pro 
duced  annually  in  the  United  States  were  all  invested  in 
this  Utopian  project.  And  this  in  the  richest  country 
on  earth! 

Does  this  excite  or  distress  the  average  American? 
Not  at  all!  He  smiles  at  it  with  his  usual  optimism  of 
youth  and  immaturity.  He  has  inherited  two  precious 
gifts  which  keep  him  in  everlasting  good  humor;  one  is 
the  better  half  of  North  America,  the  other  is  the  British 
habit  of  "muddling  through."  He  refuses  to  shudder 
at  the  warnings  and  prophecies  of  Raymond  Pearl,  who 

289 


290  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

has  just  stated  in  his  Lowell  Institute  lecture,  that  some 
time  around  the  year  2100  the  United  States  will  have  a 
population  of  about  197,000,000  and  will  then  have 
reached  its  limit  and  must  import  almost  one-half  of  its 
food. 

The  average  American,  whose  level  of  mentality  seems 
to  be  somewhere  around  fourteen  to  sixteen  years  accord 
ing  to  the  Army  intelligence  tests,  will  faithfully  echo  the 
verdict  of  his  favorite  editorial  writer,  Arthur  Brisbane, 
regarding  such  dire  forebodings.  This  clever  journalist, 
who  knows  his  audience  through  and  through,  comments 
scathingly  on  the  "mere  guesswork"  of  "another  college 
professor."  In  the  New  York  "American"  of  Decem 
ber  21,  Mr.  Brisbane  exposes  the  foolishness  of  Pearl. 
He  assures  his  own  vast  public  that  the  United  States  is 
ten  times  the  size  of  Japan.  (It  happens  to  be  more 
than  twenty  times  the  size,  but  what  matters  a  mere  error 
of  one  hundred  per  cent?)  And  if  Japan,  says  he,  can 
support  sixty  million  people  on  her  tiny  islands,  these 
mighty  United  States  can  feed  and  shelter  more  than 
seven  hundred  millions.  Why !  It  has  been  proved  that 
the  State  of  Texas  alone  could,  if  cultivated  intensively, 
take  care  of  a  billion  and  a  half  hungry  stomachs. 

Thus,  with  no  weapon  save  the  multiplication  table, 
Mr.  Brisbane  slays  the  giant,  Despair.  And  you  may  be 
sure  that  ten  million  red-blooded  Americans  are  cheering 
the  victor  at  the  top  of  their  lungs.  And  if  anybody 
insists  upon  asking  Mr.  Brisbane  whether  he  approves 
of  cultivating  Texas  and  the  rest  of  our  raw  acres  inten 
sively,  thereby  making  our  farmers  and  their  children 
work  as  the  Japanese  do,  the  crowd  will  throw  pop  bottles 
at  the  impertinent  querist. 


THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  291 

Unfortunately,  the  mere  college  professor  knows  what 
he  is  talking  about  in  his  "guesswork,"  and  Mr.  Brisbane 
does  not.  As  chief  statistician  of  the  Food  Administra 
tion  and  a  biologist  of  unusual  experience,  Mr.  Pearl  has 
a  few  thousand  facts  on  hand,  many  of  which  a  journalist 
would  have  considerable  difficulty  in  understanding.  A 
few  of  these  must  now  be  related,  more  or  less  simplified. 

It  would  be  absurd  to  deny  that  the  world  at  large, 
and  our  own  land  in  particular,  will  greatly  increase  the 
yield  of  food  and  other  crops,  as  the  need  arises.  Mil 
lions  of  fertile  acres  still  lie  untouched.  Hundreds  of 
vegetables  and  fruits  have  never  yet  been  experimented 
with  properly  with  a  view  to  finding  how  cheaply  and 
how  easily  they  can  be  raised  and  utilized  as  food.  These 
undeveloped  possibilities  have  been  extensively  studied 
and  reported  upon  by  Mr.  J.  Russell  Smith  in  his  inter 
esting  volume  on  *  *  The  World 's  Food  Resources, ' '  where 
he  says: 

"With  nearly  every  article  of  diet  except  meat  we  can 
easily  and  greatly  increase  the  supply  in  the  Western  World. 
In  the  United  States  alone,  so  little  is  farm  land  utilized  and 
sought  that  in  large  areas  east  of  the  Alleghanies  it  is  a  fact 
that  when  a  man  sells  a  farm  he  gives  away  either  the  value 
of  the  building  or  the  value  of  the  land,  for  the  price  obtained 
is  often  less  than  would  be  required  to  replace  the  buildings. 
Very  little  land  in  the  United  States  is  intensively  cultivated: 
moreover  the  Untied  States  enjoys  an  advantage  unique  in  the 
Western  World — a  vast  area  on  which  to  cultivate  the  great 
gift  of  corn.  Over  one  million  square  miles  of  the  country 
can  produce  this  king  of  forage  crops,  one  of  the  most  pro 
ductive  and  easily  grown  of  all  the  grains.  .  .  . 

"Moreover  the  American  cotton-belt  with  its  summer  rain, 
with  an  area  six  times  the  size  of  Italy,  and  now  supporting 


292  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

only  from  twenty  to  fifty  people  per  square  mile,  has  easily 
twice  the  ability  of  Italy  to  produce  food,  raiment,  and  timber, 
per  square  mile  and  is  many  fold  richer  in  minerals  and  water 
power.  .  .  . 

"There  are  in  the  West  sixty  thousand  square  miles  which 
irrigation  can  make  almost  or  quite  as  productive  as  the  re 
claimed  marshlands  which  are  twice  as  productive  as  uplands, 
and  at  the  present  time  almost  untouched." 

So  much  for  the  possibilities  of  increasing  our  yields. 
As  for  future  economies,  Mr.  Smith  makes  a  point  that 
commands  our  serious  attention.  It  will  surprise  most 
city  readers  arid  perhaps  help  them  to  correct  their  badly 
distorted  perspective  of  life  to-day  as  it  really  is  organ 
ized.  Mr.  Smith  shows  that  the  United  States  is  chiefly 
engaged  in  feeding  animals,  rather  than  men,  and  that, 
when  the  pinch  comes,  we  shall  follow  the  ancient  prece 
dent  of  Asia  and  stop  being,  as  it  were,  mere  valets  to 
the  horse,  pig,  and  cow. 

He  points  out,  quite  correctly,  that  our  farmers  are 
raising  something  more  than  five  billion  bushels  of  grain 
every  year,  of  which  about  900,000,000  bushels  are  eaten 
by  Americans  or  else  by  foreign  consumers.  Allowing 
for  annual  reserves  for  seeding  purposes,  we  find  that 
fully  four  billion  bushels  of  this  prodigious  yearly  har 
vest  are  fed  to  our  domestic  animals.  Smith  then  quotes 
the  great  expert  on  animal  nutrition,  Armsby,  and  his 
famous  proof  that  man 's  chief  competitor  for  high-grade 
foods,  such  as  wheat  and  corn,  is  the  hog ;  and  that  the 
worst  thing  that  can  happen  to  America  is  a  marked 
increase  in  the  number  of  hogs  and  steers,  especially  the 
former.  America,  as  her  population  increases,  must  cut 
down  her  herds  to  the  point  at  which  they  consume  only 


THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  293 

such  foods  as  man  cannot  eat,  such  as  hay  from  low 
grade  soils  and  roughage.  This  means  a  gradual  reduc 
tion  of  meat  and  animals  products  and  perhaps  some  day 
an  all  but  universal  vegetarianism,  such  as  we  now  see 
all  over  Asia.  If  we  move  in  this  d  .-.•ec'tion,  it  is  obvious 
that  the  world  will  continue  to  feed  even  a  growing  popu 
lation  for  much  longer  than  two  centuries. 

There  is  no  challenging  either  these  statistics  or  the 
conclusion  Smith  draws.  The  only  difficulty  lies  in  his 
last  "If."  If  people  will  consent  to  reduce  their  meat 
diet,  and  if  farmers  will  virtually  do  away  with  all 
draught  animals  save  those  absolutely  indispensable,  no 
doubt  things  will  proceed  as  indicated.  But  will  they? 

This  brings  us  the  root  of  the  whole  matter.  And 
we  find  that  Mr.  Smith,  together  with  most  other  inves 
tigators  who  have  concentrated  too  narrowly  upon  the 
abstract  statistical  side  of  the  food  and  population  prob 
lems,  have  left  entirely  out  of  their  calculations  the  two 
strongest  forces  in  human  nature.  They  think  exclu 
sively  in  terms  of  theoretical  land  areas  and  theoretical 
yields.  They  ignore  the  man  with  the  hoe  and  the  man 
with  the  tractor.  They  look  away  from  the  investor's 
lamentable  weakness  for  wishing  to  earn  dividends  on 
capital  sunk  in  farm  lands.  And  they  pass  by  on  the 
other  side  when  the  toiler  of  the  fields  shows  peevishness 
at  being  expected  to  work  fourteen  hours  a  day.  And 
yet,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  the  whole  future  of  agri 
culture  will  be  shaped  by  these  two  fundamental  human 
interests.  The  investor  will  always  be  asking:  "Can 
this  field  show  a  profit,  if  I  have  it  tilled?"  And  the 
farm  laborer  will  be  demanding  certain  hours  of  work, 
certain  amounts  of  food,  a  certain  kind  of  a  house  to  live 


294  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

in,  and  all  the  rest  that  enters  into  a  set  of  life  habits. 
It  is  useless  to  speculate  about  the  world's  future  supply 
of  food  unless  we  begin  with  a  study  of  these  two  limiting 
factors. 

Let  us  first  look  at  the  problem  of  living  standards, 
which  is  sharply  raibeu  by  Mr.  Smith's  interesting  state 
ment  about  the  possibility  of  our  progressively  becoming 
vegetarian  and  living  on  the  grains  the  quadrupeds  now 
take  from  us.  II is  entire  argument  hinges  upon  an  im 
mense  improbability,  the  improbability  that  people  who 
have  accustomed  themselves  to  a  rich  diet  and  a  rela 
tively  easy  method  of  procuring  it,  namely,  through  ex 
tensive  agriculture,  are  going  to  give  up  two  such  lux 
uries  until  every  method  of  preserving  them  has  been 
tested  and  has  failed.  We  have  tried  to  show,  earlier  in 
this  volume,  how  tenacious  all  life  habits  are.  We 
pointed  out  the  amazing  stubbornness  of  food  habits. 
We  may  be  sure  that  human  ingenuity  will  exert  itself 
to  the  utmost  to  find  some  way  of  going  on  eating  and 
drinking  as  of  yore. 

Now  men  have  already  discovered  ways  of  guarantee- 
in  LT  this  blessed  privilege.  All  the  United  States  needs 
to  do  in  order  to  maintain  its  present,  or  even  a  higher, 
level  of  dietary  is  to  regulate  the  growth  of  population 
and  the  net  volume  of  food  exports.  The  population 
growth  can  be  regulated  in  two  manners,  first  through 
birth  control  and  secondly  through  immigration  control. 
The  Government  of  Holland  has  already  adopted  the 
former  measure  with  unqualified  success,  and  we  shall 
probably  follow  suit  as  soon  as  the  political  influence  of 
the  more  backward  religious  groups  in  our  population 
can  be  overcome  through  education,  which  is  now  being 


THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  295 

carried  on  by  our  relatively  small  but  energetic  intel 
lectual  class.  As  for  immigration  control,  it  is  on  the 
point  of  being  exercised  to  a  degree  far  beyond  anything 
yet  attempted  since  the  old  days  when  China  and  Japan 
barred  their  gates  against  all  foreigners.  Our  farmers 
and  our  city  workers  have,  for  the  first  time,  joined  hands 
in  their  determination  to  reduce  the  influx  of  aliens. 

Already  the  American  farmer  realizes  that  his  ways  of 
life  will  be  jeopardized,  if  the  plans  of  some  well  mean 
ing  city  folk  are  carried  out  and  millions  of  immigrants 
are  scattered  through  the  farming  districts  of  our  coun 
try,  there  to  form  low-standard  colonies  clinging  to  their 
old  folkways  and  speech  and  working  fourteen  hours  a 
day,  as  the  Italian,  Jewish,  Greek,  Polish,  and  other  farm 
colonies  all  over  the  North  Atlantic  States  and  New  Eng 
land  now  do.  And  the  American  of  the  old  sod  is  now 
debating  whether  he  shall  give  way  before  this  driving 
horde  or  shall  take  steps  to  preserve  the  high  level  of 
living  on  the  farm  which  the  more  prosperous  farmers 
here  have  been  enjoying  for  many  years.  If  the  stir 
ring  of  human  forces  now  visible  through  American  so 
ciety,  notably  among  farmers,  can  be  taken  as  a  sign  and 
symptom,  we  must  conclude  that  America  is  going  to 
reject  Smith's  Asiatic  policy  and  will  soon  be  moving 
in  earnest  to  check  our  population  growth  and  to  main 
tain  our  high  food  production  per  hour's  work,  which, 
when  all  is  said  and  done,  is  the  basic  measure  of  a  high 
civilization,  so  far  as  its  agrarian  aspect  is  concerned. 

It  may  be,  of  course,  that  we  shall  see  in  the  future 
something  of  a  decline  in  the  number  of  meat  animals 
raised  in  our  own  land ;  but  this  will  not  be  coupled  with 
a  reduction  of  meat  consumption  to  the  point  of  vege- 


296  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tarianism.  We  shall  see  the  animal  industries  trans 
ferred  more  and  more  to  those  immense  stretches  in  South 
America,  Australia,  and  Siberia  where  cheaper  lands 
and  cheaper  labor  make  the  business  more  profitable. 
American  farmers  will  probably  increase,  rather  than  de 
crease,  their  herds  of  high-grade  beef  cattle  and  hogs, 
handling  them  in  closer  conjunction  with  scientific  crop 
ping  systems  on  farms  of  medium  acreage.  Both  the 
very  large  ranch  and  the  very  small  intensively  culti 
vated  farm  (below  fifty  acres)  may  be  expected  to  dis 
appear,  not  many  decades  after  an  intelligent  national 
policy  has  been  pursued.  The  large  ranch  is  primitive 
and  wasteful  of  soil  power.  The  tiny  intensively  culti 
vated  farm  is  Asiatic  and  cruelly  wasteful  of  man  power. 
Neither  has  any  place  in  a  complete  civilization. 

The  more  closely  one  analyzes  Smith's  entire  inter 
pretation  of  civilization  and  its  relation  to  agriculture, 
the  more  evident  does  it  become  that  he  has,  probably 
without  clear  consciousness,  accepted  the  Asiatic  stand 
ard  of  living  as  worthy  of  emulation.  Thus  we  hear  him 
say  that  "  draft  animals  seem  necessary  to  the  ascent  of 
a  people  toward  civilization,  although  in  parts  of  Japan 
and  China  it  has  been  shown  that  need  of  them  can  ulti 
mately  be  reduced  to  a  minimum."  This  statement  im 
plies  that  the  farmers  of  Japan  and  China  who  have  dis 
pensed  largely  with  draft  animals  have  ascended  to 
civilization;  if  they  have  not,  then  the  whole  remark  is 
meaningless.  But  any  white  man  who  has  observed  the 
day's  work  of  an  Oriental  who  farms  with  few  or  none  of 
the  beasts  of  burden  cannot  honestly  say  that  the  Orien 
tal  is  civilized.  He  has  dispensed  with  the  beasts  only 
by  making  himself,  his  wife,  and  his  children  beasts.  He 


THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  297 

slaves  from  fourteen  to  sixteen  hours  a  day,  with  his 
whole  family ;  and  he  wears  himself  and  them  out  prema 
turely,  with  almost  nothing  to  show  for  their  crushing 
toil  save  a  scanty  food  supply  and  the  other  bare  neces 
sities  of  life.  The  blunt  fact  of  the  matter  is  that  the 
lack  of  draft  animals  in  Japan  and  China  is  one  of  the 
'best  proofs  of  the  low  civilization  of  those  lands. 

The  United  States  is  not  giving  up  draft  animals. 
Many  agricultural  experts  believed  that,  with  the  intro 
duction  of  the  all  but  revolutionary  farm  tractor,  we 
should  see  a  swift  decline  in  the  number  of  horses  used 
on  our  farms.  But  no  such  change  is  taking  place. 
Oddly  enough,  as  farmers  prosper  more  and  more 
through  the  use  of  tractors  and  other  labor-saving  ma 
chinery,  they  increase  the  number  of  high-grade  horses 
and  mules.  The  reasons  for  this  are  too  technical  to  be 
set  forth  here.  Enough  to  say  that  it  is  now  pretty 
generally  believed  that  the  tractor  is  going  to  be  the 
horse's  best  friend  in  the  long  run,  leading  to  a  higher 
specialization  in  heavy  farm  work  that  will  enable  the 
farmer  to  get  more  out  of  both  the  machine  and  the 
animal,  and  on  a  more  economical  basis. 

So  much  for  the  standard  of  living  as  an  obstacle  to 
Mr.  Smith's  hopes.  Now  let  us  see  about  the  investment 
returns.  And  at  the  outset  let  us  clearly  understand 
that  what  is  to  be  said  on  this  point  holds  equally  good, 
whether  it  is  a  private  capitalist  of  the  State  which  con 
templates  agrarian  investments.  The  notion  is  abroad 
that,  while  a  private  capitalist  cannot  afford  to  sink 
money  in  losing  ventures,  somehow  the  public  can.  This 
is  absurd.  If  it  will  not  pay  me,  an  individual,  to  de 
velop  ten  thousand  acres  of  Montana  bone-dry  soil,  it  will 


298  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

not  pay  the  State  of  Montana  to  do  it,  unless  there  is 
some  other  advantage  besides  immediate  profits  to  be  cer 
tainly  derived  from  the  operation.  And  if  there  is  such 
an  advantage,  then  the  two  cases  are  not  truly  com 
parable. 

Now,  the  whole  question  of  return  on  investment  is 
bound  up  w-ith  two  others,  namely,  the  precise  character 
of  available  raw  acreage  and  the  rate  at  which  the  world 's 
population  is  increasing  and  laying  fresh  demands  upon 
the  farmer.  How  accessible  is  the  unworked  land? 
What  climate  does  it  have?  Can  men  work  it  without 
being  stricken  with  fevers  or  pestilence?  Can  steam 
ships  reach  it?  How  far  is  it  from  railroads?  How 
many  people  will  consume  the  products  it  can  best  grow  ? 
These  and  a  hundred  similar  matters  are  involved;  and 
the  mere  naming  of  them  conveys  a  painful  impression 
of  the  true  intricacy  of  the  real  problem. 

In  another  chapter  of  this  book,  Mr.  Warren  S.  Thomp 
son  shows  us  how  fast  the  world  population  is  growing. 
Taking  his  conservative  estimate  and  the  more  liberal  one 
of  Knibbs,  who  is  indubitably  the  greatest  authority  in 
the  world  on  population,  you  may  strike  a  safe  average 
between  them  and  find  that  the  net  increase  per  year  is 
somewhere  around  17,000,000  or  18,000,000  souls.  Bear 
in  mind  that  this  is  not  the  birth  rate.  It  is  the  excess 
of  births  over  deaths. 

What  does  this  appalling  figure  mean  ?  It  means  that 
about  every  six  months  a  new  Belgium  is  added  to  the 
world's  horde  and  about  every  two  years  a  new  France! 

And  how  about  the  three  square  meals  a  day  which 
these  millions  express  a  yearning  for  ?  Well,  an  Ameri 
can  eats,  in  the  course  of  one  year,  about  1,900  pounds  of 


THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  299 

food,  dry  weight.  A  Japanese  eats  as  little  as  900 
pounds.  We  may  roughly  take  therefore  1,000  pounds 
of  flour,  cereals,  smoked  fish,  sugar,  and  other  dry  food 
stuffs  as  the  amount  which  the  average  world  inhabitants 
devour  as  soon  as  they  attain  full  growth.  This  estimate 
is,  in  all  likelihood,  too  low ;  but  let  it  pass. 

Every  year  the  farmers  of  the  world  must  provide 
some  twenty-three  billion  pounds  of  food  more  than  they 
ever  provided  before  simply  to  keep  pace  with  the  rap 
idly  expanding  population  and  the  ever  increasing  de 
mands  for  seed. 

Or  look  at  this  staggering  fact  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  land  to  be  tilled.  In  many  of  the  countries  least 
highly  developed  agriculturally  it  takes  from  ten  to 
twenty  acres  to  support  one  man.  In  our  own  country 
it  takes  between  three  and  four  acres.  Japan,  by  inten 
sive  culture  of  the  richest  lands  only,  provides  for  three 
men  on  every  acre.  By  and  large  the  average  for  the 
world  is  somewhat  less  than  two  men  to  three  acres. 
Taking  that  as  our  basis,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  let 
us  see  what  must  be  happening. 

Every  season  the  farmers  of  the  world  must  plow  and 
plant,  cultivate,  and  harvest  from  twenty  to  thirty  mil 
lion  more  acres  than  they  did  tlie  previous  year.  True, 
there  will  be  more  gnarled  hands  to  grasp  the  plow- 
handle,  more  backs  to  bend  over  the  furrow;  but  the 
new  land,  the  reserve  supply  for  expansion,  diminishes 
year  by  year.  And  every  new  plot  of  virgin  soil  wrested 
from  the  wild  is  just  a  little  worse  than  that  which  went 
before.  What  this  means  is  shown  in  the  accompanying 
map  of  New  York  State.  The  immense  black  L  extend 
ing  from  the  Hudson  River  almost  to  Lake  Erie  and 


300  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

from  Poughkeepsie  to  Lake  Champlain  represents  the 
extra  area  that  the  peasants  of  the  world  must  add  to 
their  tillage  every  year,  if  the  increase  of  world  popu 
lation  is  to  be  fed  as  well  as  the  average  man  is  fed  to- 


The  solid  black  block  in  the  above  map  of  New  York  State  rep 
resents  the  area  of  new  land  which  must  be  tilled  every  year  in 
order  to  feed  the  extra  millions  who  are  added  amually  to  the 
world's  population. 


day  in  Japan,  China,  Europe,  and  America.  To  me 
this  black  L  is  the  most  staggering  fact  in  all  life  to-day. 
Do  you  not  begin  to  see  the  whole  phenomenon  of 
world-wide  living  costs  in  a  new  light?  At  no  time  in 
the  past  century,  while  population  has  been  growing  at 
this  terrific  rate,  have  the  farmers  of  the  world  increased 
their  acreage  and  their  crops  proportionately.  Had  they 


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i    i    1    M 


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301 


302  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tried  it,  they  would  have  found  it  an  impossible  task. 
The  railroads  and  the  merchant  marine  of  the  whole 
world  could  not  have  stood  the  strain  of  carrying  such 
a  mounting  output,  had  it  been  dumped  at  their  ter 
minals.  Nor  could  the  farm  machinery  manufacturers 
have  delivered  the  necessary  equipment.  Thus  it  has 
happened  that,  every  year  throughout  the  past  genera 
tion,  the  food  supply  has  been  lagging  further  and  fur 
ther  behind  the  hungry  hordes.  And  this  alone  would 
suffice  to  send  the  price  of  all  foodstuffs  steadily  upward, 
the  world  over,  even  if  no  other  forces  had  been  at  work 
to  the  same  end,  such  as  money  inflation  and  a  rising 
standard  of  living. 

"With  ea,ch  fresh  season,  therefore,  the  question  becomes 
more  and  more  acute : 

Where  are  we  going  to  find  this  acreage,  and  where 
find  men  to  work  it? 

Of  the  33,000  million  acres  of  the  land  area  of  the 
world,  not  more  than  40  per  cent,  or  13,000  million  acres, 
are  available  for  food  production.  With  a  permanent 
system  of  agriculture,  this  land  can  support  one  indi 
vidual  per  acre  if  standards  of  living  do  not  rise  any 
higher.  To  be  sure,  Japan  supports  more  than  three 
people  per  acre,  but  she  does  this  only  because  she  has 
taken  her  best  land,  only  18.7  per  cent  of  the  total,  and 
cultivates  it  intensively  by  slave  methods  repugnant  to 
us.  It  is  very  much  to  be  doubted  whether  the  world 
as  a  whole  can  ever  reach  and  maintain  a  population 
per  acre  of  cultivated  land  as  great  as  Germany  and 
France,  which,  just  before  the  war,  used  1.15  acres 
and  1.5  acres  per  capita  respectively.  We  may  safely 
say  that  the  earth  can  support  not  more  than  13,000 


THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  303 

million  people,  even  on  a  pretty  low  standard  of  living. 
At  the  present  rate  of  increase  this  population  will  be 
reached  in  just  200  years. 

So  much  for  the  world  at  large.  Now  let  us  look  more 
narrowly  at  our  own  land.  What  have  we  been  doing 
with  our  soil?  What  remains  to  be  done?  What  will 
happen  to  the  babies  born  to-day  if  our  present  tend 
encies  in  farming  continue  until  the  year  2000?  These 
questions  bring  us  sharply  back  to  the  problem  of  our 
own  national  policy. 

In  our  own  new  and  supposedly  inexhaustible  America, 
we  have  expanded  from  a  floor  space  of  200  million  acres 
and  a  population  of  four  million  to  one  of  1903  million 
acres  inhabited  by  110  million  people.  Forty-seven  per 
cent  of  our  1903  million  acres  is  now  in  farms,  though  it 
has  thus  far  been  profitable  to  improve  and  farm  only 
about  one-half  the  area.  There  remains  a  reserve  of  over 
a  billion  acres,  it  is  true ;  but  nearly  half  of  this  is  arid 
land  having  a  precipitation  of  less  than  15  inches,  and 
less  than  10  per  cent  will  become  available  after  the  com 
pletion  of  all  irrigation  projects  possible  under  the  pres 
ent  system  of  construction.  In  addition,  making  allow 
ance  for  permanent  forests,  for  unusable  swamps  and  for 
cities,  roads,  and  railroads,  there  are  something  like  three- 
quarters  of  a  billion  acres  which  must  be  forever  with 
held  from  agricultural  use.  There  is  left  300  million 
acres,  roughly  35  per  cent  of  our  present  farm  lands, 
which  may  be  incorporated  with  them.  Moreover  this 
35  per  cent  is  the  poor  expanse  of  waste  passed  by  as 
worthless  by  the  farmers. 

Now  how  can  this  poor  land  be  used  ?  There  are  just 
three  methods.  One  is  to  dose  it  heavily  with  fertilizers. 


304  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

The  second  is  to  labor  over  soil  and  crops  much  more 
minutely  than  on  rich  soils.  And  the  third  is  to  improve 
plant  breeds.  Now  we  have  already  shown  the  futility 
of  the  first  two  ways  of  salvation :  fertilizers  cost  money 
and,  when  applied  to  poor  land,  bring  its  yield  only  up 
to  that  of  fair  land,  but  at  a  very  high  cost  per  acre, 
thus  increasing  the  production  cost  and  diminishing  the 
margin  of  profit;  and  excess  of  labor  works  in  just  the 
same  way,  besides  causing  discontent  in  the  toiler.  So 
there  remains  only  the  third. 

As  to  its  infinite  possibilities,  the  city  dweller  who 
reads  the  amateur  optimists  is  warmly  convinced.  He 
has  read  all  about  Luther  Burbank  in  the  Sunday  Sup 
plements.  And  wasn't  there  a  boy  down  in  Georgia 
who  grew  a  hundred  bushels  of  corn  on  one  acre  with 
some  special  fancy  seed?  Just  get  a  scientist  busy  in 
venting  new  plants,  and  there  will  be  no  food  short 
age. 

Once  more,  however,  we  must  apply  the  cold  water 
treatment  to  this  Polly  anna  vision.  Mr.  E.  M.  East  can 
tell  us  a  few  facts  that  hurt.  Doubtless  somebody  will 
retort  to  the  facts  by  calling  Mr.  East  a  college  professor. 
But  in  addition  to  the  ignominy  of  being  one,  Mr.  East 
happens  to  have  had  some  years  of  experience  as  a  prac 
tical  farmer  and  has  done  as  much  in  the  way  of  scien 
tific  plant  breeding  as  anybody  in  the  country.  In  fact, 
his  achievements  in  improving  breeds  of  corn  are  so  sen 
sational  that,  if  a  Sunday  Supplement  writer  were  able 
to  understand  them,  he  would  give  them  a  full  page  with 
two-color  pictures. 

At  the  La  Jolla  Conference,  speaking  of  such  possi 
bilities,  Mr.  East  adduced  facts,  too  technical  to  report 


THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  305 

here,  showing  that  the  popular  impression  is  totally 
wrong.  To  be  sure,  he  remarked,  some  noteworthy  ad 
vances  have  been  made,  and  others  will  be.  But  when 
all  is  said  and  done,  no  new  processes  are  involved, 
and  the  few  time-saving  devices  now  used,  or  in  the 
prospect  of  being  used,  for  the  evolution  of  new  forms 
of  plant  and  of  animal  life  are  not  going  to  increase  our 
resources  by  leaps  and  bounds.  The  prospective  increase 
is  relatively  small.  The  development  of  plants  and  ani 
mals  under  domestication  has  been  going  on  for  thou 
sands  of  years  by  these  same  methods,  and  the  type  of 
labor-saving  device  we  have  described  will  hasten  matters 
only  a  little.  There  will  be  no  revolution.  Furthermore, 
let  us  suppose  that  the  maximum  prediction  shall  be  real 
ized.  In  Mr.  East's  opinion,  by  the  expenditure  of  time 
and  money  for  'breeding  projects  on  a  scale  at  present 
beyond  the  dream  of  the  most  enthusiastic  propagandist, 
current  production  will  have  been  increased  by  twenty 
per  cent.  Is  this  a  consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished 
or  not?  Perhaps  it  is  merely  a  vehicle  for  exploiting  a 
limited  store  of  soil  fertility  at  a  greater  rate,  a  means 
of  dissipating  capital  more  rapidly. 

During  the  seventies  and  eighties  in  the  United  States 
there  was  a  great  expansion  of  farming.  The  rich  lands 
of  the  "West  were  cultivated  extensively.  Because  of 
these  methods  there  were  low  yields  per  acre,  but  the 
number  of  new  acres  utilized  was  so  great  that  over 
production  and  extremely  low  prices  prevailed.  More 
recently  there  has  been  a  trend  toward  intensive  farm 
ing,  hence  an  increased  yield  per  acre  and  a  lowering  of 
the  production  per  man.  The  average  yield  of  all  crops 
between  1903  and  1918  was  about  15  per  cent  greater 


306  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

than  that  between  1860  and  1890,  but  it  took  a  consider 
ably  greater  expenditure  of  man  power  per  acre  to  get 
this  yield.  Those  who  point  out  that  we  have  not  reached 
the  yield  per  acre  of  the  best  farmers  of  Europe  would 
do  well  to  remember  this  point.  The  most  intensive 
farmers  of  Europe,  the  Belgians,  cultivate  about  five 
acres  per  man.  The  American  farmer  handles  26  acres. 

Now,  when  we  forget  about  the  war  and  go  back  over 
the  production  figures  per  capita  from  1870  to  1916,  we 
find  that  meat  has  decreased  markedly  and  total  food 
production  slightly.  We  are  still  getting  plenty  to  eat, 
but  overproduction  and  cheap  food  have  stopped. 

The  population  of  the  United  States  is  now  increasing 
somewhat  more  rapidly  than  the  acreage  of  cropped  land, 
as  is  shown  by  the  census  report  of  the  years  1880-90 
fixing  the  amount  of  improved  land  at  5.7  acres  per 
capita  and  the  report  of  1910  revealing  the  fact  that 
the  acreage  of  improved  land  had  decreased  to  5.2  per 
capita.  And  all  this  in  face  of  the  fact  that  18,000,000 
more  people,  mostly  whites,  were  demanding  food  with 
each  oncoming  year ! 

And  yet  this  tendency  is  not  only  inevitable  but  funda 
mentally  sound.  This  is  as  it  should  be.  The  time  for 
easy  food  production  from  virgin  lands  has  vanished. 
Fertilizer  consumption  has  increased  by  leaps  and 
bounds.  Some  farms  have  been  abandoned  through  de 
pletion  to  the  point  of  exhaustion.  New  lands  less  pro 
ductive  in  nature  are  gradually  being  put  under  the  plow 
because  prices  are  such  that  they  yield  a  fair  return. 
Intensive  farming  is  increasing.  In  all  this  there  is 
every  evidence  of  diminishing  returns  in  agriculture,  yet 
few  take  any  thought  of  what  it  means. 


THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  307 

Herbert  Hoover  knows  what  it  means,  though,  and 
he  recently  made  it  plain  to  the  American  Association 
of  the  Baking  Industry,  in  an  address  which  had  to  do 
with  wheat  and  wheat  prices.  His  words  are  worth 
quoting  here  at  some  length,  for  they  amply  confirm  my 
main  contention. 

After  stating  that  the  general  level  of  commodity 
prices  would  steadily  decline,  Mr.  Hoover  went  on  to 
declare  that  wheat  should  not  and  could  not  drop  pro 
portionately.  Here  is  his  argument.  Your  attention 
is  particularly  called  to  the  last  of  it : 

"In  other  words,  if  something  like  pre-war  prices  should 
again  prevail,  I  do  not  believe  we  will,  over  any  considerable 
term,  see  the  old  90-cent  wheat,  or  anything  like  it.  During 
the  war  the  price  of  wheat  was  successfully  held  at  a  higher 
ratio  than  other  commodities — an  index  of  about  243  for 
wheat,  against  186  for  other  commodities  in  1917,  in  order  to 
induce  larger  production.  If  we  take  the  year  1913  average 
price  of  wholesale  wheat  and  other  commodities  as  100,  at  the 
present  time  the  prices  are  approximately  300  for  wheat  and 
about  270  for  other  commodities.  Wheat  has  been  losing 
greater  advantage,  and  a  reduced  acreage  has  been  the  conse 
quence.  It  is  my  belief  that  wheat  must  hold  at  least  fifty 
index  points  advance  over  comparative  commodity  prices  if 
we  are  to  assure  supplies  for  our  increasing  population. 
That  is,  if  other  commodities  should  return  to  100,  wheat  must 
hold  150  or  some  considerable  excess. 

"There  are  many  reasons  for  this.  One  of  them  is  that 
expansion  of  the  possible  wheat  area  in  the  United  States  is 
now  comparatively  limited  unless  we  retrench  on  other  essen 
tial  production.  In  fact,  there  is  even,  indeed,  serious  shrink 
age  of  wheat  area  in  prospect,  due  to  the  unconquered  inva 
sion  of  rust  in  our  spring  wheat  areas  of  the  Northwest.  This 


308  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

threatened  deficiency  must  be  maintained  by  an  inducement 
to  expand  wheat  production  in  the  Southwest.  Furthermore, 
our  average  yield  of  wheat  per  acre  must  have  a  steady  in 
crease  if  we  are  to  meet  the  necessities  of  an  advancing  popula 
tion.  An  increase  from  our  average  of  less  than  sixteen 
bushels  toward  the  average  of  western  European  production  of 
over  twenty-five  bushels  per  acre  is  in  the  main  the  possible 
source  of  supply  in  the  long  run.  This  can  only  be  obtained 
by  more  intensive  cultivation  and  the  larger  use  of  fertilizers, 
and  those  extra  costs  do  not  show  a  profitable  return  ratio  in 
prices.  The  American  farmer  naturally  can  only  engage  in 
extra  expense  for  extra  return.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  our 
breadstuff  needs  will  outgrow  our  capacity  for  the  produc 
tion  of  wheat.  This  is  not  necessarily  the  case  within  our 
century,  for  it  is  always  possible  to  contemplate  an  increase 
per  acre  that  would  keep  pace  with  our  increase  in  population, 
but  this  cannot  be  accomplished  on  the  basis  of  the  prewar 
ratio  prices  of  wheat  to  other  commodities." 

In  short,  land  is  wearing  out;  acres  still  virgin  are 
poor ;  larger  yields  mean  costly  fertilizer  and  unpleasant 
labor.  And  so  up  must  go  the  cost  of  food.  Deflating 
the  currency  may  produce  the  illusion  of  cheaper  food. 
But  in  the  permanent  readjustment  of  values  that  must 
follow  deflation,  food  costs  are  bound  to  be  higher  than 
ever. 

All  of  which  is  the  price  our  children  must  pay  for  the 
recklessness  of  our  grandfathers  and  fathers,  who,  in  the 
midst  of  their  broad  acres,  used  to  laugh  at  Malthus  and 
his  gloomy  prognostications  of  an  overcrowded  world  and 
universal  hunger.  The  farmers  of  the  past  century  re 
ceived  in  trust  the  agricultural  capital  of  the  country. 
The  people  gave  it  to  them  with  the  same  careless  liber 
ality  that  we  always  hand  over  to  poor  relatives  the 


THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  309 

things  around  the  house  which  we  cannot  use.  Not  one 
man  in  a  million  ever  thought  of  those  endless  prairies 
as  capital  which  must  be  made  to  show  profits  or  else 
eventually  thrown  into  the  hands  of  a  receiver.  They 
were  mere  dirt  and  dirt  cheap.  What  if  nine  pioneers 
out  of  ten  did  rob  the  soil,  taking  out  24  cents'  worth  of 
fertility  every  time  they  grew  a  bushel  of  wheat  ?  Could 
anybody  be  so  foolish  as  to  suppose  that  folks  might  ever 
use  up  the  world's  supply  of  black  earth?  As  well 
think  of  drinking  up  the  Pacfic  Ocean ! 

The  few  who  have  given  the  subject  serious  thought 
frequently  defend  their  optimism  by  pointing  to  Europe. 
Europe  proves  that  soils  do  not  wear  out,  and  that  there 
is  no  limit  to  the  number  of  people  this  little  old  world 
can  support.  "After  thousands  of  years  of  cropping, 
her  soils  are  supporting  more  people  than  ever,"  is  the 
familiar  remark. 

Unfortunately,  though,  this  opinion  is  about  as  sound 
as  Mr.  Brisbane's  wonderful  vision  of  Texas  supporting 
the  world.  As  Mr.  East  has  shown  by  a  careful  study  of 
population  and  agricultural  statistics,  Europe  has  never 
been  cropped  to  capacity  until  the  present  generation. 
And  it  is  an  ominous  fact  that,  in  the  very  same  decades 
when  her  nations  were  reaching  their  limit  of  intensive 
cultivation  and  dense  population,  the  whole  continent 
exploded  in  a  war  of  economic  expansion  that  involved 
almost  every  country  and  finally  flung  two-thirds  of  the 
continent  back  into  starvation,  pestilence,  and  barbarism. 
He  would  be  a  dull  historian  indeed  who  failed  to  mark 
some  inner  connection  between  these  two  phenomena. 

Here  a  word  about  another  outburst  of  optimism  which 
has  latelv  been  advertised  and  has  doubtless  solaced  not 


310  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

a  few.  Many  casual  observers  have  supposed  that  the 
immense  losses  of  life  in  Europe  between  1914  and  1918 
by  battle,  pestilence  and  famine,  must  have  removed,  for 
many  years  to  come,  the  danger  of  overpopulation.  This 
is  far  from  the  truth.  About  18,000,000  Europeans  died 
as  a  result  of  the  war.  But  in  about  twelve  months  the 
increase  of  population  throughout  the  world  completely 
offsets  this  war  loss. 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  dangers  of  overpopulation  are 
relative,  not  only  to  the  gross  food  supply  available,  but 
also  to  the  facilities  for  distribution,  which  are  both  geo 
graphical  and  artificial.  That  is,  China  may  theoreti 
cally  be  able  to  feed  600,000,000  mouths  or  even  more, 
as  Mr.  Paul  Reinsch  believes ;  and  yet  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
China  is  to-day  horribly  overpopulated.  The  reason  for 
this  is  that  she  has  few  railroads,  no  good  highways 
worth  mentioning,  no  great  storage  warehouses,  and  none 
of  the  Western  farm  credit  and  cooperative  systems. 
Now,  Europe  to-day  is  in  almost  the  same  predicament 
as  China.  Her  transportation  system  and  her  distribu 
tion  have  collapsed  and  cannot  be  rehabilitated  for  some 
years,  with  the  best  of  effort,.  In  1910  Europe  contained 
442,000,000  people  and  probably  a  round  450,000,000  on 
the  fatal  day  when  the  World  War  broke  out.  Her 
transportation  and  distribution  system  was,  in  1914, 
fairly  adjusted  to  the  colossal  task  of  feeding  and  cloth 
ing  her  hordes.  To-day  the  railroads  of  Central  and 
Eastern  Europe  are  in  such  a  state  of  decay  that  they 
cannot  properly  care  for  the  elemental  needs  of  more 
than  a  quarter  of  the  beings  who  are  now  starving  be 
side  those  rusted  rails  and  decrepit  locomotives.  Some 
432,000,000  Europeans  have  survived  the  war  and  the 


THE  WORLD'S  FOOD  311 

influenza  and  typhus  epidemics ;  but  the  food  production 
and  distribution  systems  can  take  care  of  only  125,000,- 
000  well  or  250,000,000  poorly.  The  other  182,000,000 
or  more  wretches  are  either  undernourished  or  starving 
to-day,  in  spite  of  all  relief  work,  and  they  must  continue 
to  starve  until  the  reconstruction  of  the  railways  has  been 
finished. 

The  implications  of  this  horror  confirm  our  whole 
argument  and  add  a  fresh  lesson  all  their  own.  They 
show  the  peril  of  permitting  populations  to  become  so 
dense  that  they  are  dependent  upon  the  perfect  and 
regular  functioning  of  an  intricate  system  of  long-range 
food  production  and  food  distribution.  Such  a  system 
may  operate  smoothly  in  fair  weather ;  but  when  trouble 
comes,  the  price  that  the  dumb  crowd  pays  for  its  crowd 
ing  is  hideous. 

To  conclude  then,  if  people  are  willing  to  live  like  the 
beasts  of  the  fields,  always  searching  food  and  facing 
horrible  hazards  of  famine,  there  is  room  for  many  more 
millions  on  earth.  If  they  care  to  enjoy  leisure  and  the 
simple  comforts  which  our  Washington  clerk  now  revels 
in,  and  if  they  insist  upon  getting  even  modest  returns 
from  capital  and  labor  invested  in  farms,  it  is  clear  that, 
measured  in  terms  of  the  long,  long  ages  which  mark 
man's  career  on  this  planet,  the  dead  line  will  soon  be 
reached. 


CHAPTER  23 
WHO   SHALL  INHERIT   THE  EARTH? 

WE  have  just  seen  that  the  world's  population  is  in 
creasing  at  the  incredible  rate  of  18,000,000  a 
year,  and  if  this  keeps  up  the  last  tillable  acre  of  soil 
will  be  plowed  in  the  spring  of  2120,  or  thereabouts.  We 
have  also  seen — what  most  of  us  already  knew — that  the 
105,000,000  whites  and  blacks  that  are  citizens  of  the 
continental  LTnited  States  have  set  their  faces  determin 
edly  in  the  direction  of  a  higher  and  ever  higher  stand 
ard  of  living,  which  means  more  and  better  food,  better 
clothes,  finer  homes,  easier  travel,  and  fewer  hours  of 
daily  toil.  On  the  face  of  it,  here  is  a  tragic  dilemma. 
If  the  herds  of  humans  go  on  growing,  food  will  give  out, 
and  so  too  will  almost  everything  else;  and  then  where 
is  the  much  loved  American  standard  of  living  f  On  the 
other  hand,  what  can  we  Americans  do  to  check  that 
fatal  increase  of  population?  Is  it  not  inevitable  that 
we  shall  soon  be  swamped  by  this  sickening  irrational 
breeding  that  resembles  nothing  so  much  as  that  of  the 
little  fish  which  spawn  in  some  tiny  stream  and  there 
grow  so  fast  that  they  crowd  thousands  of  their  kind 
out  of  the  water? 

The  easiest  and  gloomiest  answer  to  this  has  lately 
been  repeated  in  vigorous  journalistic  language  by  Mr. 
Lothrop  Stoddard,  who  tells  us,  in  his  "Rising  Tide  of 

Color": 

312 


WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTI?       315 

"The  colored  races  outnumber  the  whites  more  than  Tapa- 
one.  .  .  .  That  is  a  formidable  ratio,  and  its  significa.ious 
heightened  by  the  fact  that  this  ratio  seems  destined  to  .>or 
still  further  in  favor  of  color.     There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
present  the  colored  races  are  increasing  very  much  faster  than 
the  white.     Treating  the  primary  race-stocks  as  units,  it  would 
appear  that   whites  tend  to  double  in  eighty  years,   yellows 
and  browns  in  sixty  years,  blacks  in  forty  years.  .  .  . 

"Now  what  must  be  the  inevitable  result  of  all  this?  It  can 
mean  only  one  thing :  a  tremendous  and  steadily  augmenting 
outward  thrust  of  surplus  colored  men  from  overcrowded 
colored  homelands  .  .  .  into  those  emptier  regions  of  the  earth 
under  white  political  control.  .  .  . 

"Thus  the  colored  world  ...  is  being  welded  by  the  most 
fundamental  of  instincts,  the  instinct  of  self-preservation,  into 
a  common  solidarity  of  feeling  against  the  dominant  white 


What  can  be  said  of  this  forecast  ?  Is  the  evidence  in 
its  favor  sound  ?  "Will  it  endure  severe  analysis  ?  For 
tunately  it  will  not.  It  is  based  on  estimates  and  sta 
tistical  methods  not  unlike  those  which  we  found  Mr. 
Arthur  Brisbane  using  when  he  told  us  the  United  States 
could  feed  700,000.000  people.  As  Mr.  Stoddard  's  entire 
argument  is  erected  upon  such  figures  and  inferences,  it 
will  be  enlightening  to  cite  one  clear  and  significant  case 
of  his  method  before  we  take  up  the  wider  problem  of 
anticipating  the  future  of  world  population. 

How  does  Mr.  Stoddard  arrive  at  his  conclusion  that 
the  yellows  and  browns  are  increasing  so  rapidly,  as 
compared  with  the  whites?  He  begins  by  stating  that 
Japan  is  increasing  at  the  rate  of  about  800,000  per 
year.  Now  this  is  incorrect.  The  most  carefully 
checked  estimates  reduce  this  number  to  anywhere  be- 


MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

600,000  and  700,000,  and  the  first  Japanese  census, 
being  announced,  confirms  them.  But  this  error  is 

^ht  in  comparison  with  the  manner  in  which  Mr. 
otoddard  uses  the  Japanese  figure  as  a  basis  for  esti 
mating  the  growth  of  Chinese  population.  He  admits, 
of  course,  that  China  has  no  vital  statistics,  but  goes  on 
to  say  that  her  annual  increase,  at  the  Japanese  rate, 
would  be  6,000,000.  And  he  leaves  his  reader  with  this 
statement  unqualified  and  unsupplemented.  The  reader 
who  is  not  fond  of  analyzing  statistics  has  to  take  it  at 
face  value  and  build  his  thoughts  around  it. 

Now,  without  plunging  into  any  technicalities,  we  can 
point  out  many  facts  which  even  Mr.  Stoddard  should 
have  known  and  sensed  as  extremely  significant.  To 
begin  with,  Japan  is  wholly  a  temperate-zone  country  in 
which  the  natural  hazards  of  infancy  are  very  much 
slighter  than  those  in  all  of  South  China  and  a  good  part 
of  North  China.  Even  if  both  countries  were  equal  with 
respect  to  the  care  of  infants,  the  probabilities  are  that 
more  Japanese  babies  would  survive  and  grow  up.  But 
the  countries  are  far  from  equal  in  the  care  of  children. 
As  Mr.  Stoddard  should  know,  the  Japanese  Government 
is  a  highly  organized  power  devoted  to  the  well  being  of 
its  people ;  it  has  introduced  Western  sanitation  and  hy 
giene,  local  hospitals  and  nurses,  and  other  improvements 
making  for  public  health.  This  certainly  increases  the 
survival  rate  of  infants  far  above  that  of  China,  where 
there  is  virtually  no  organized  health  work  outside  of  six 
or  seven  large  cities.  Another  fact  that  Mr.  Stoddard 
ought  to  know  is  that  the  Japanese,  like  most  maritime 
people,  are  scrupulously  clean  and  neat  in  all  personal 
and  household  habits,  whereas  nine  Chinese  out  of  every 


WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTH?      315 

ten  are  unspeakably  filthy.  The  children  born  in  a  Japa 
nese  home  would,  on  this  score  alone,  have  a  tremendous 
advantage  over  Chinese  babies  in  the  hard  struggle  for 
existence.  Mr.  Stoddard  might  have  been  expected  to 
know  also  that  in  China  girl  babies  are  unwelcome  and 
given  little  attention  or  even  neglected  altogether,  while 
thousands  are  still  strangled  and  thrown  into  the  rivers. 
In  Japan  no  such  custom  generally  prevails.  This  ruins 
what  little  wreckage  is  left  of  Mr.  Stoddard 's  figure. 
And  we  still  have  to  add  that  in  Japan  climatic  condi 
tions  affecting  agriculture  are  very  stable.  Abnormal 
rainfall  and  excessive  drought  scarcely  enter  into  the 
farmers'  reckoning  over  the  greater  part  of  the  islands. 
In  China,  on  the  other  hand,  torrential  summers  are  fol 
lowed  by  one  or  two  years  of  total  drought.  One  season 
the  crops  are  washed  out  by  the  roots.  The  next  season 
they  wither  in  the  first  sprout.  And  then  men,  women, 
and  children  clutter  the  roads  with  their  corpses,  as  they 
are  doing  at  this  very  hour  in  five  of  the  northern  prov 
inces,  where,  according  to  the  American  consular  and 
Red  Cross  reports,  20,000,000  wretches  are  doomed  to 
starve,  no  matter  what  efforts  may  be  made  on  their 
behalf.  Horrors  like  this  happen  on  a  smaller  scale  every 
few  years  somewhere  in  China. 

To  be  blunt,  it  is  absurd  to  draw  any  parallel  between 
Japan  and  China  in  matters  of  population  growth.  Such 
misuse  of  statistics  only  adds  to  the  burden  of  guilt 
which  the  careless  journalism  of  both  Japan  and  America 
must  carry. 

The  handling  of  population  statistics  is  an  extremely 
delicate  task,  requiring  intimate  knowledge  of  a  great 
many  geographical,  social,  and  historical  facts  which 


316  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

affect  not  only  the  population  itself  but  also  the  estimat 
ing  of  it.  It  is  prudent  then  to  lean  on  the  judgment 
of  an  expert  rather  than  on  the  impressions  of  a  jour 
nalist.  I  have  therefore  asked  Mr.  Warren  S.  Thomp 
son  to  give  us  his  answer  to  the  question  as  to  who  shall 
inherit  the  earth.  This  he  has  done  in  the  next  section 
of  this  chapter.  Mr.  Thompson's  studies  of  population 
have  been  thoroughly  scientific,  and  the  conclusions  he 
has  reached  have  attracted  wide  attention  among  the 
few  men  who  are  competent  to  pass  technical  judgment 
on  them.  It  seems  to  me  that  they  deserve  the  fullest 
publicity,  for  they  must  alter  profoundly  a  number  of 
ideas  and  policies  that  have  found  vogue  in  America. 

MB.    THOMPSON   ON   WORLD   POPULATION 

Since  a  considerable  proportion  of  the  population  of 
the  world  has  never  been  counted,  there  is  more  or  less 
uncertainty  regarding  the  number  of  people  in  the  world 
to-day.  Despite  this  fact,  it  will  be  instructive  to  survey 
the  growth  of  population  during  the  last  two  centuries 
in  those  parts  of  the  world  for  which  we  have  data  worthy 
of  consideration. 

The  best  estimates  of  Europe's  population  near  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  are  those  of  Levas- 
seur.  Using  these  as  a  basis,  we  find  that  the  people  of 
European  origin  numbered  from  about  ninety  to  a 
hundred  millions,  distributed  about  as  follows : 

France 19,000,000 

German  Empire  and  Prussia 23,000,000 

England 9,000,000 

Austria    12,000,000 

European  Russia 10,000,000 


WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTH?      317 

Other  parts  of  Europe  and  European  col 
onies  from  8,000,000  to  10,000,000 

In  1910  Europe  had  a  population  of  about  442  mil 
lions,  and  in  addition  to  this  had  sent  forth  colonists  to 
new  lands,  who,  with  their  descendants,  numbered  about 
140  millions,  as  follows : 

United  States 81,000,000 

Canada    7,250,000 

Australia  and  New  Zealand 5,500,000 

South  Africa 1,250,000 

Latin  America 15,000,000 

Siberia    25,000,000 

Other 5,000,000 

Thus  the  population  of  European  stock  grew  from 
about  ninety  to  a  hundred  millions,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  eighteenth  century  to  about  580  millions  in  the  early 
years  of  the  twentieth  century.  It  is  probably  not  over 
estimating  its  increase  to  say  that  it  was  six  times  as 
great  in  1910  as  it  was  in  1710.  During  the  eighteenth 
century  its  growth  was  not  very  rapid.  Levasseur  esti 
mates  that  Europe's  population  was  175  millions  in  1800 ; 
and,  if  we  add  to  this  the  population  of  the  European 
colonies,  we  should  have  a  population  of  about  180  mil 
lions.  Speaking  in  round  terms,  the  peoples  of  Euro 
pean  stock  only  doubled  in  numbers  during  the  eight 
eenth  century,  but  more  than  tripled  their  numbers  dur 
ing  the  nineteenth  century. 

A  comparison  of  the  growth  of  the  peoples  of  European 
stock  with  that  of  other  peoples  is  baffling.  Some  of 
the  so-called  "censuses"  of  China  taken  about  1700  show 
that  it  had  a  population  of  somewhat  less  than  30  mil- 


818  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

lions,  while  those  taken  about  a  century  later  show  that 
it  had  over  360  millions;  more  than  a  twelvefold  in 
crease  in  a  century.  A  rate  of  growth  which  is  only 
exceeded  in  modern  times,  as  far  as  I  have  been  able  to 
ascertain,  by  the  United  States  between  1800  and  1900. 
Theoretically,  it  is  by  no  mean  impossible  for  China  to 
have  had  the  increase  shown  by  the  "censuses" ;  but  from 
the  known  facts  regarding  the  character  of  the  Chinese 
and  the  nature  of  their  industrial  system,  it  appears  ex 
tremely  improbable  that  any  such  increase  in  their  num 
bers  took  place  during  the  eighteenth  century.  It  seems 
much  more  likely  that  the  unsettled  condition  of  the 
country  and  the  failure  to  enumerate  the  families  in 
large  areas  will  account  for  a  small  number  of  people 
returned  in  their  early  "  censuses. ' '  In  recent  years 
there  has  been  an  almost  universal  agreement  among 
those  who  should  know  most  about  the  Chinese  that  their 
numbers  have  generally  been  exaggerated  in  the  past. 
The  date  which  seems  most  worthy  of  credence  places 
the  present  population  of  China  at  from  330  to  340  mil 
lions.  This  is  about  twenty-five  millions  less  than  were 
returned  by  the  "census"  of  1812.  In  the  face  of  such 
uncertainty  it  seems  improbable  that  the  population  in 
the  territory  now  embraced  by  China  and  her  depend 
encies  has  had  any  unusually  rapid  growth  in  the  last 
two  centuries.  It  may  have  doubled  in  that  period. 
But  remembering  that  there  has  been  no  fundamental 
change  in  the  basis  of  agriculture  or  manufacture  in 
China  during  this  period  such  as  has  taken  place  in  the 
Western  world,  even  this  seems  unlikely. 

The  figures  which  are  accepted  by  the  Japanese  Gov 
ernment  show  that  Japan's  population  increased  slowly 


WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTH?       319 

during  the  greater  part  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries,  its  rate  being  approximately  two  per  cent  per 
annum.  Of  course  these  figures  are  only  estimates,  but 
they  accord  well  with  what  we  should  expect,  knowing, 
as  we  do,  the  conditions  which  in  general  favor  or  hinder 
population  growth. 

Recent  censuses  in  India  show  that  many  of  the  earlier 
estimates  of  its  population  were  too  small  and  that  its 
rate  of  growth  in  recent  years  has  been  exaggerated  as 
a  consequence.  Indeed,  it  does  not  seem  likely  that  the 
population  of  India  has  grown  much  during  the  eight 
eenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  in  comparison  with  that 
of  most  European  countries. 

As  in  China  and  Japan,  life  has  not  become  appre 
ciably  easier  in  India  during  the  last  two  centuries,  and 
it  is  inherently  unlikely  that  any  very  large  increase  in 
its  population  has  taken  place. 

What  is  true  of  the  population  of  China,  Japan,  and 
India  is  without  doubt  true  of  the  native  populations  of 
the  rest  of  Asia,  all  of  Africa,  and  most  of  the  islands  of 
the  South  Seas.  There  has  been  no  great  change  in  the 
methods  of  securing  a  livelihood  in  these  parts  of  the 
world  within  the  period  of  historical  record,  nor  have 
the  sanitary  conditions  of  life  much  improved.  It  is  not 
reasonable  to  suppose,  therefore,  that  the  numbers  of 
people  living  in  these  areas  has  greatly  changed.  In 
recent  years,  under  the  tutelage  of  the  whites,  certain 
countries,  as  Java,  have  shown  a  very  rapid  increase, 
but  these  are  exceptions. 

We  shall  never  approach  greater  accuracy  in  compar 
ing  the  population  of  European  stock  in  the  past  with 
that  of  other  stocks  than  to  accept  the  statement,  com- 


320  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

monly  made,  that  from  ninety  to  one  hundred  millions 
of  Europeans  in  1700  constituted  about  ten  per  cent  of 
the  total  population  of  the  world.  In  1910  the  580  mil 
lions  of  people  of  European  stock  constituted  about 
thirty-five  or  thirty-six  per  cent  of  the  world's  popula 
tion.  If  the  people  of  European  stock  had  continued 
to  increase  between  1910  and  1920  at  the  same  rate  that 
they  increased  between  1900  and  1910,  they  would  have 
numbered  about  665  millions  at  the  present  time.  Of 
this  665  millions,  from  495  to  500  millions  would  have 
been  in  Europe,  and  the  remainder,  from  165  to  170 
millions,  in  the  lands  which  Europeans  have  colonized. 
The  war  checked  the  growth  of  the  peoples  of  Europe 
so  that  its  total  population  at  present  probably  does  not 
exceed  from  470  to  480  millions.  If  we  reckon  it  at 
about  470  millions,  then  the  peoples  of  European  stock 
number  from  about  635  to  640  millions  and  constitute 
slightly  over  thirty-seven  per  cent  of  the  world's  popu 
lation,  reckoning  the  world's  population  at  1700  millions 
in  1920. 

Figures  1  and  2  present  in  graphic  form  the  conclu 
sions  arrived  at  from  a  study  of  the  available  data. 
They  are  not  as  accurate  as  we  should  like  them  to  be, 
but  they  will  help  us  to  visualize  the  most  important 
changes  in  population  growth  during  the  last  two  cen 
turies.  Let  us  now  turn  our  attention  to  the  probable 
future  growth  of  the  world's  population. 

Since  the  work  of  Malthus  first  directed  the  serious 
attention  of  students  to  the  problem  of  population 
growth,  sufficient  progress  has  been  made  in  understand 
ing  the  forces  at  work  to  permit  of  certain  predictions 
of  a  general  nature  of  whose  accuracy  we  may  feel  as- 


WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTH?      321 


YLLLOW 

39.0 


WHITE 

NON-CUeOPEAM 

4.0 

WHITE. 
10.0 


BLACK 

I2.O 


BROWN 
35.0 


PROPORTION  OF  WORLDS  POPULATION 
COMPRISED  BY  DIFFERENT  RACES 
1700 

FIG.  1 

sured.  Malthus  was  the  first  economist  to  point  out  that 
the  limits  of  population  growth  are  very  definitely  deter 
mined  by  our  ability  to  increase  the  means  of  subsist 
ence.  This  may  seem  so  obviously  true  that  it  needs  no 


322 


MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 


proof.  Its  significance  was  not  realized,  however,  until 
Malthus  went  on  to  prove  that  population  tended  to 
increase  more  rapidly  than  man  could  produce  the  neces- 


WHITE    3.5 

NON-EUROPEAN 


WHITE.   373 

CUKOPCAM 


BROWN  24.7 

INDIA  4,  MALAY  PtNlftSVLA  CMltfLY 


PROPORTION  OF  WORLDS  POPULATION 
COMPRISED  BY  DIFFERENT  KACE5 
1920 

FIG.  2 

sities  of  life.  It  followed  from  this  that  if  man  were 
to  avoid  the  hardships  of  famine,  war,  disease,  etc.,  he 
must  take  measures  to  keep  the  increase  of  population 
commensurate  with  the  increase  of  his  capacity  to  pro- 


WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTH?       323 

duce  food  and  other  necessities  of  his  life.  The  fact  that 
Malthus  was  thinking  of  a  social  order  in  which  the 
means  of  obtaining  a  livelihood  remained  relatively  fixed 
does  not  in  the  least  vitiate  his  argument.  The  law  of 
diminishing  returns  comes  into  operation  Sooner  or  later 
under  any  given  system  of  industry,  and  the  difficulty  of 
making  a  living  increases  with  the  growth  of  popula 
tion. 

That  Malthus  seemed  to  make  no  allowance  for  the  in 
crease  in  man's  productive  power  due  to  the  settlement 
of  new  lands,  the  development  of  steam  and  electric 
transportation,  and  the  rise  of  machine  industry  led 
many  thoughtful  people  to  disbelieve  in  his  whole  doc 
trine  of  population  growth.  For  more  than  a  century 
after  the  appearance  of  the  first  edition  of  Malthus 's 
" Essay  on  Population"  few  people  took  his  doctrine  se 
riously.  What  was  obvious  to  every  one  was  that  man, 
especially  the  man  of  Europe,  had  tapped  new  resources 
and  had  discovered  new  ways  of  making  use  of  his  re 
sources. 

It  seemed  to  many  that  there  was  no  limit  to  the  num 
ber  which  the  earth  might  support.  In  the  flush  of  these 
discoveries  even  the  economists  of  Europe  gave  little 
attention  to  what  was  perfectly  clear  to  Malthus ;  namely, 
that,  no  matter  how  easy  life  might  be  for  a  time,  it  would 
be  a  relatively  short  period  until  man  multiplied  beyond 
his  power  to  support  himself  in  reasonable  comfort  if  he 
did  not  learn  to  make  use  of  "preventive"  checks.  He 
was  fully  convinced  that  if  man  did  not  voluntarily  limit 
his  numbers  by  later  marriages,  personal  restraint,  in 
creased  bachelorhood,  etc.,  nature  would  limit  them  in  a 
much  harsher  manner  by  the  application  of  the  "posi- 


324  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

live"  checks — famine,  disease,  pestilence,  war,  and  other 
forces  which  make  for  a  high  death-rate. 

More  and  more  we  are  coming  to  see  that  Malthus's 
position  is  essentially  correct.  Man  must  control  the 
birth-rate  and  keep  his  numbers  within  reasonable  limits, 
or  he  must  suffer  from  the  hardships  of  a  continuous  and 
severe  struggle  with  nature  to  get  a  scanty  livelihood. 
There  may  be  periods  of  comparative  plenty  for  a  fav 
ored  few,  such  as  the  last  half  or  three  quarters  of  a 
century  for  the  people  of  the  Western  world,  but  sooner 
or  later  nature  will  refuse  to  yield  abundantly  to  all, 
and  the  " positive"  checks  will  begin  to  operate  with  in 
creased  severity.  There  is  very  good  evidence  to  show 
that  we  have  about  passed  through  our  period  of  abun 
dance,  and  that  now  we  must  take  more  thought  for  our 
future  and  that  of  our  descendants. 

On  Map  I,  showing  birth  rates,  you  will  find  indicated 
those  parts  of  the  world  in  which  the  practice  of  "pre 
ventive"  checks  is  coming  to  be  an  important  factor  in 
the  control  of  population  growth,  and  also  those  other 
parts  in  which  the  " positive"  checks  still  hold  undis 
puted  sway.  I  realize  that  no  sharp  distinction  between 
such  localities  is  accurate ;  but  this  map  will  serve  to  im 
press  upon  you  how  small  a  fraction  of  the  world 's  popu 
lation  makes  use  of  the  "preventive"  checks.  It  is  not 
more  than  fifteen  per  cent  at  the  outside,  when  we  class 
the  whole  nations  together;  actually,  the  proportion  of 
people  who  make  use  of  them  in  any  of  these  nations  is 
probably  not  over  from  twenty-five  to  fifty  per  cent,  so 
that  it  will  not  be  far  amiss  to  say  that  only  from  about 
five  to  eight  per  cent  of  the  world's  population  makes  use 
of  "preventive"  checks.  Throughout  from  ninety -two 


325 


326  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

to  ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  human  race,  the  "positive" 
checks  alone  control  the  growth  in  numbers. 

When  the  "  positive "  checks  alone  control  population 
growth,  its  rate  of  increase  depends  directly  upon  the 
abundance  or  scarcity  of  the  necessities  of  life.  If  there 
is  abundance,  population  can  easily  double  in  twenty- 
five  years,  while  if  there  is  great  scarcity,  it  may  remain 
stationary  or  even  decrease.  Digby  in  "Prosperous 
British  India"  has  estimated  that  not  fewer  than  thirty- 
two  millions  of  people  died  directly  of  the  result  of 
famines  in  India  during  the  nineteenth  century.  If  this 
estimate  of  deaths  directly  due  to  famines  is  even  ap 
proximately  correct,  the  total  number  of  deaths  due  to 
them  must  have  reached  the  staggering  figures  of  from 
fifty  to  sixty  millions,  for  disease  and  pestilence  find  easy 
prey  among  hunger-weakened  people.  In  the  books  de 
scribing  life  in  China  one  finds  constant  reference  to 
famines  and  floods  as  causes  of  the  death  of  vast  num 
bers  of  people.  In  a  number  of  books  there  is  reference 
to  a  great  famine  in  the  year  1877  which  is  supposed  to 
have  been  the  direct  cause  of  the  death  of  not  fewer  than 
ten  millions  in  two  of  the  smaller  provinces.  Again  the 
Tai-ping  Rebellion  is  said  to  have  cost  at  least  ten  mil 
lions  of  people  their  lives,  while  some  authorities  place 
the  number  at  twenty  millions.  And  the  famine  in 
North  China  to-day  promises  to  destroy  fully  as  many. 

Such  disasters  attract  a  great  deal  of  attention  because 
they  descend  upon  man  suddenly  and  kill  great  num 
bers  in  a  short  space,  but  they  probably  cause  the  death-* 
of  only  a  few  as  compared  with  the  numbers  dying  year 
by  year  in  these  same  countries  because  the  necessities  of 
life  are  always  hard  to  get.  Had  Malthus  lived  a  century 


327 


328  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

later,  lie  could  have  marshaled  an  even  more  imposing 
array  of  facts  than  he  did  to  show  nature  puts  a  limit  to 
man's  increase  if  man  will  not  forestall  it. 

It  is  quite  impossible  to  tell  what  the  birth-rates  and 
death-rates  are  in  those  countries  not  having  good  sys 
tems  for  the  reporting  of  births  and  deaths,  but  it  is 
probably  not  overestimating  their  birth-rates  to  sup 
pose  that  throughout  that  part  of  the  world  in  which 
the  "positive"  checks  prevail,  the  birth-rate  ranges  be 
tween  forty  and  fifty  per  one  thousand  living  persons  per 
annum.  The  death-rate  probably  ranges  from  thirty  to 
fifty  in  normal  times,  and  in  times  of  stress  may  mount 
higher.  On  this  point,  see  Map  II. 

The  best  authorities  estimate  the  infant  mortality  in 
China  at  about  fifty  per  cent;  that  is,  one  half  of  the 
children  born  die  before  they  are  a  year  old.  It  is  but 
little  less  in  Eussia  (about  forty  per  cent  in  normal 
times),  and  is  probably  fully  as  high  in  India,  the  Ma 
lay  Archipelago,  Africa,  and  most  of  South  and  Central 
America. 

The  data  in  the  Japan  Year-Book,  1919,  show  that  396 
out  of  every  thousand  children  under  five  years  of  age 
died  in  the  year  1914.  This  figure  is  not  altogether 
accurate,  but  whatever  error  it  contains  is  probably 
on  the  side  of  under-statement  rather  than  over-state 
ment. 

Thus  we  see  that  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  chil 
dren  of  the  world  are  born  only  to  die  in  early  infancy. 
Of  those  who  survive  infancy  a  great  many  die  before 
they  reach  maturity ;  so  that  in  most  of  the  countries  of 
the  world  certainly  not  over  one  third  and  probably  not 
over  one  fourth  of  the  children  live  to  the  age  at  which 


329 


330  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

they  might  reproduce  themselves.  With  such  high  death- 
rates,  population  increases  but  slowly,  if  at  all. 

On  Map  III  are  shown  the  rates  of  natural  increase 
in  the  different  countries  of  the  world.  It  is  clear  from 
an  examination  of  this  map  that  the  areas  of  high  birth 
rates  and  high  death-rates  are  the  areas  of  low  natural 
increase.  At  the  present  time  the  countries  with  rela 
tively  low  birth-rates  and  death-rates  are  contributing 
most  largely  to  the  world's  population. 

Will  this  continue  to  be  the  case,  or  will  the  people 
with  high  birth-rates  increase  more  rapidly  in  the  future, 
and  in  time  swamp  the  Europeans  who  are  coming  to  use 
the  preventive  checks?  There  is  little  doubt  that  the 
black,  brown,  and  yellow  races  will  increase  more  rapidly 
in  the  century  before  us  than  they  have  in  the  one  just 
past.  For  one  thing,  they  are  slowly  adopting  Western 
methods  of  industry,  which  means  that  they  can  greatly 
increase  their  productive  capacity  and  thus  secure  the 
necessities  of  life  for  a  larger  population.  In  the  second 
place,  they  are  beginning  to  reach  out  for  new  lands  in 
which  they  may  plant  colonies.  In  these  two  ways  they 
hope  to  secure  the  sustenance  for  a  much  larger  popula 
tion  than  their  native  land  will  now  support. 

The  growth  of  the  population  in  Japan  during  the 
last  thirty  or  fifty  years  seems  typical  of  what  we  may 
expect  to  take  place  in  other  Eastern  countries  as  they 
adopt  Western  industrial  methods  and  ideas  of  sanita 
tion.  In  the  century  and  a  quarter  preceding  1872, 
Japan's  population  is  supposed  to  have  increased  at  the 
rate  of  about  0.2  per  cent,  or  twenty-seven  per  cent  dur 
ing  the  entire  period.  In  the  half  century  since  1872, 
its  population  has  increased  at  the  rate  of  about  1.0  per 


WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTH?      331 

cent  and  1.5  per  cent  per  annum,  and  the  population 
has  increased  about  sixty-six  per  cent.  These  data  are 
not  as  accurate  as  we  could  wish,  for  Japan  has  never 
taken  a  real  census  until  1920,  but  they  give  a  fairly 
accurate  notion  of  the  changes  in  population  growth 
during  the  last  century  and  three  quarters.  The  official 
data  on  birth-rates  and  death-rates  for  Japan  show  that 
the  birth-rate  has  been  increasing  slowly  of  late  years, 
while  the  death-rate  has  remained  stationary.  It  seems 
reasonable  to  say  that  Japan  really  has  a  stationary 
birth-rate,  and  a  death-rate  that  is  gradually  falling,  in 
asmuch  as  greater  accuracy  in  the  registration  of  births 
and  deaths  is  being  gradually  attained.  This  is  the 
natural  course  of  events  in  a  country  like  Japan,  where 
industry  is  increasing  its  productivity,  modern  methods 
of  sanitation  are  beginning  to  be  adopted,  and  the  social 
forces  governing  the  birth-rate  have  been  but  a  little 
affected  by  these  changes. 

A  more  productive  system  of  industry  and  an  improve 
ment  in  sanitary  practices  mean  a  temporary  removal  of 
some  of  the  "positive"  checks,  and  population  immedi 
ately  increases  until  a  new  equilibrium  between  people 
and  means  of  subsistence  is  established.  Always  and 
everywhere  the  death-rate  is  a  more  or  less  direct  result 
of  the  pressure  of  population  on  the  means  of  subsistence. 
Where  the  pressure  is  light,  the  death-rate  is  low;  and 
where  the  pressure  is  severe,  the  death-rate  is  high. 
The  birth-rate,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not  determined  by 
any  such  simple  set  of  causes.  It  is  the  result  of  the 
complicated  interaction  of  biological,  social,  and  economic 
forces  and  does  not  vary  greatly  from  year  to  year  as  the 
death-rate  does.  The  biological  forces  represented  by  the 


332  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

sex  instincts  have  not  changed  from  time  immemorial 
and  are  undoubtedly  as  strong  in  the  French,  who  have 
a  very  low  birth-rate,  as  they  are  in  the  Chinese,  having 
a  birth-rate  of  fifty  or  more.  The  social  customs  and 
traditions  governing  marriage  and  family  ideas  and 
standards  of  living,  etc.,  change  very  slowly,  and  do  not 
seem  to  have  any  immediate  connection  with  the  changes 
which  may  occur  in  an  industrial  system.  Religious 
ideals,  customary  family  standards,  and  the  great  inertia 
of  the  customs  in  private  life  will  explain  the  slow  re 
sponse  of  the  birth-rate  to  changes  in  the  economic  sys 
tem.  If  it  is  the  custom  for  every  boy  and  girl  to  marry 
at  from  sixteen  to  twenty  years  of  age  and  if  the  pri 
mary  object  of  marriage  is  to  raise  sons  to  look  after  the 
ancestral  worship,  and  keep  the  family  alive,  then  we  may 
not  expect  to  find  any  rapid  fall  in  the  birth-rate. 

Man  seems  naturally  conservative  regarding  changes 
in  the  mode  of  his  private  life.  It  usually  takes  some 
great  crisis  to  work  sudden  changes.  Even  to-day,  as 
pointed  out  above,  only  a  small  portion  of  the  people  of 
western  Europe  and  America  practise  the  use  of  pre 
ventive  checks  to  population  growth.  And  this  change 
has  only  taken  place  slowly  as  the  individual  man,  eman 
cipated  from  the  strict  control  of  family,  came  to  de 
velop  in  comparative  freedom  his  own  modes  of  conduct 
and  standards  of  living. 

There  is  no  apparent  reason  to  believe  that  the  pre 
ventive  checks  will  come  into  operation  more  rapidly 
among  the  peoples  of  the  Eastern  world  and  the  Indians 
of  America  than  among  the  peoples  of  European  stock. 
Indeed,  it  seems  likely  that  the  customs  which  encourage 
early  marriage,  a  high  birth-rate,  and  close,  almost  com- 


WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTH?      333 

munal  family  life  will  succumb  even  more  slowly  in  the 
East  than  they  have  in  the  West.  These  customs  appear 
to  be  more  solidified  in  the  East  than  they  ever  were  in 
the  West.  The  "cake"  of  custom  is  thicker  and  tougher 
in  Asia  than  it  was  in  Europe.  It  will,  therefore,  be 
harder  to  break  through.  The  emancipation  of  the  in 
dividual  person  from  the  thralldom  of  the  family  will 
take  place  very  slowly  in  the  East,  and  we  cannot  expect 
to  see  any  considerable  decline  in  the  birth-rate  until 
the  individual  man  has  at  least  a  moderate  degree  of 
freedom  in  determining  his  own  course  of  conduct.  All 
this  means  that  the  positive  checks  to  population  growth 
will  be  the  only  effective  checks  in  operation  in  a  non- 
European  world  during  the  next  century  and  a  half  or 
two  centuries. 

In  order  to  realize  the  full  significance  of  this,  we  must 
remember  that  almost  two  thirds  of  the  world's  popula 
tion  is  non-European.  Its  birth-rate  is  very  high. 
What  its  growth  will  actually  be  will  depend  chiefly  on 
two  factors:  (1)  the  amount  of  new  lands  opened  up 
for  colonization;  (2)  the  rate  at  which  its  present 
system  of  hand  production  is  changed  over  into  that  of 
machine  production.  The  opening  up  of  large  areas  of 
new  land  in  Siberia,  Africa,  America,  and  the  Malay 
Archipelago  to  the  peoples  of  Japan,  India,  and  China 
might  very  easily  result  in  a  doubling  of  their  numbers 
during  each  quarter  of  the  next  century.  In  taking  pos 
session  of  new  lands,  these  people  would  not  materially 
change  their  standards  of  living  and  customs  of  daily 
life,  and  consequently  an  expansion  of  their  productive 
powers  would  be  used  almost  exclusively  to  support  a 
greater  number  of  human  beings  on  their  present  plane 


334  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

of  living  rather  than  for  an  improvement  in  their  mode 
of  life. 

The  development  of  machine  industry,  even  though 
adding  greatly  to  their  productive  power,  would  not 
cause  as  rapid  an  increase  of  population  as  the  settlement 
of  new  lands  would.  There  seems  to  be  a  strong  tend 
ency  in  industrial  work  to  breed  the  desire  for  better 
living,  probably  due  to  the  example  set  by  the  entre 
preneur  and  professional  classes  who  direct  industry. 
Furthermore,  industry  inevitably  breaks  up  the  older 
social  and  economic  dominance  of  the  family  and  thus 
frees  the  individual  members.  Hence  modern  industry 
tends  to  develop  the  use  of  preventive  checks  much  more 
rapidly  than  does  agriculture. 

There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  some  portion  of  the 
inhabitants  of  China,  India,  and  Japan,  the  Asiatic  coun 
tries  which  might  send  forth  colonists  in  large  numbers, 
is  well  adapted  to  every  climate  in  which  man  now  lives 
in  any  considerable  numbers.  Therefore  they  could  com 
pete  with  the  European  not  only  in  the  temperate  zone, 
but  could  people  the  tropics  of  Africa,  America,  and  the 
Malay  Archipelago,  where  the  European  cannot  live  and 
work.  At  a  glance  on  Map  IV  giving  the  density  of 
population  in  various  parts  of  the  world,  one  sees  that 
the  territory  available  for  settlement  by  these  people  is 
much  greater  than  that  in  which  the  white  man  can 
thrive.  //  no  obstacles  were  put  in  the  way  of  Asiatic 
colonists,  it  would  not  be  surprising  to  see  the  greatest 
migration  of  history  take  place  during  the  century  ahead 
of  us.  The  750  millions  of  people  living  in  India,  China, 
and  Japan  might  easily  number  6,000  millions  in  the 
year  A.  D.  2020. 


335 


BELGIUM 

NETHERLANDS 

UNITED  KINGDOM 

JAPAN 

ITALY 

GERMANY 

AUSTRIA 

CHINA 

FRANCE 

INDIA 

HUNGARY 

SPAIN 

RUSSIA-EUROPEAN 

UNITED  STATES 


RELATIVE  DENSITY  OF  POPULATION 
PRINCIPAL    COUNTRIES   1910-20 


336 


WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTH?       337 

It  is  quite  clear,  however,  that  there  are  many  ob 
stacles  to  the  extensive  migration  of  these  peoples.  Cus 
toms  and  traditions  bind  them  to  their  home  lands.  It 
would  take  some  time — perhaps  four  or  five  generations 
under  favoring  conditions — for  these  social  restrictions 
on  colonization  to  break  down  in  the  case  of  the  Chinese. 
In  the  case  of  the  Japanese  these  restrictions  are  not 
very  strong  and  are  already  passing  away.  Among  the 
Hindus  they  still  have  great  influence,  but  are  still  being 
rapidly  dissipated. 

Again,  the  white  man  has  already  taken  vigorous  ac 
tion  to  prevent  the  colonization  by  these  peoples  in  coun 
tries  in  which  he  can  work.  How  consistently  he  will 
pursue  the  policy  of  keeping  the  temperate  climates  of 
Europe  and  America,  Africa,  Australia,  and  northern 
Asia  for  himself,  no  one  can  say,  but  it  seems  likely  that 
his  efforts  along  this  line  will  increase  rather  than  dimin 
ish.  There  is  no  good  reason  to  suppose  that  he  could  not 
be  successful  in  his  efforts ;  but  his  attempts  to  dominate 
the  tropics  may  be  less  fortunate. 

In  the  third  place,  the  growth  of  the  nationalistic  spirit 
among  these  Eastern  peoples  may  lead  their  governments 
to  encourage  them  to  stay  within  the  boundaries  of  their 
respective  countries  or  to  push  into  the  adjacent  territory 
of  their  neighbors.  Such  a  policy  might  conceivably  lead 
to  armed  conflicts  that  would  keep  the  Asiatic  powers 
from  pursuing  any  aggressive  colonization  projects  out 
side  of  Asia  for  several  generations. 

In  the  fourth  place,  there  is  the  possibility  of  a  com 
bination  of  the  more  self-conscious  of  the  yellow,  brown, 
and  black  races  against  the  domination  of  the  white  race. 
It  seems,  however,  that  such  an  event  is  in  the  dim  future 


33S  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

and  that  we  need  give  it  no  consideration  at  present. 
Perhaps  by  the  time  that  it  would  be  possible  for  such  a 
grouping  of  peoples  to  be  effected,  we  should  have 
learned  how  to  get  along  better  together  than  we  do  at 
present. 

There  will  probably  be  no  great  change  in  the  rate  of 
population  growth  among  the  non-European  peoples  in 
the  next  three  or  four  generations.  As  mentioned  above, 
they  will  probably  reduce  their  death-rates,  thus  raising 
the  rate  of  natural  increase,  but  this  will  take  place 
slowly  and  need  not  occasion  us  alarm.  The  immediate 
future  holds  no  promise  of  such  sudden  easing  of  the 
positive  checks.  The  whites  will  not  allow  their  lands 
to  be  colonized  by  other  races,  and  the  process  of  taking 
possession  of  the  tropics  and  new  continents  will  prove 
exceedingly  costly  in  human  lives  even  when  done  by 
Chinese,  Hindus,  and  Japanese. 

The  future  growth  of  the  black  race  is  even  more  un 
certain  than  that  of  the  yellow  and  brown  races.  The 
black  man  has  shown  no  inclination  to  increase  the  pro 
ductivity  of  his  land  either  by  more  steady  industry  or 
by  the  adoption  of  the  white  man's  inventions.  Within 
historical  times  he  has  never  ventured  abroad  except  un 
der  compulsion.  In  contact  with  the  white  man  he  con 
tracts  vices  that  threaten  to  destroy  him.  It  would  not 
be  surprising  if  the  black  race  were  to  die  out  or  be  ab 
sorbed  into  other  races.  The  brown  and  yellow  races 
do  not  manifest  the  objection  to  intermarriage  with  the 
black  race  that  the  white  man  does.  It  does  not  seem 
umlikely,  in  any  event,  that  the  black  race  will  increase 
very  rapidly.  Except  in  the  Southern  States,  the  negro 


WHO  SHALL  INHERIT  THE  EARTH?      339 

has  probably  not  increased  during  the  last  few  centuries. 

The  future  growth  of  the  peoples  of  European  stock  is 
less  uncertain  than  that  of  the  non-European  peoples. 
There  is  little  reason  to  doubt  that  the  birth-rate  among 
the  European  will  continue  to  fall,  although  the  decline 
will  probably  be  slower  than  it  was  during  the  last  cen 
tury.  On  the  other  hand,  the  death-rate  will  probably 
fall  almost  as  rapidly  as  the  birth-rate  for  the  next  three 
or  four  decades,  so  that  once  Europe  begins  to  recover 
from  her  present  chaos,  its  population  will  increase  al 
most  as  rapidly  as  in  the  last  three  or  four  decades. 
From  some  time  in  the  third  quarter  of  this  century  it 
is  likely  that  the  rate  of  increase  of  European  stock  will 
decline  appreciably.  It  may  not  be  more  than  half  its 
present  rate  by  the  end  of  the  century.  But  even  if  this 
should  be  the  case,  the  people  of  European  stock  will  be 
increasing  more  rapidly  than  those  of  other  stocks. 
There  is  a  very  good  reason  to  believe  that  Europeans 
will  constitute  a  larger  proportion  of  the  world's  popula 
tion  a  century  hence  than  they  do  at  present. 

Thus  we  need  not  fear  for  the  position  of  the  white 
race  in  the  world.  There  has  been  much  ill-considered 
talk  about  race  suicide  in  this  country.  The  alleged  dan 
ger  of  the  white  race  being  swamped  by  the  other  races 
is  largely  illusory.  //  we  allow  ourselves  to  become  the 
remnant  of  a  dying  race,  it  will  be  becaiise  we  are  so 
short-sighted  as  to  enter  into  competition  with  races  hav 
ing  lower  standards  of  living.  We  are  able  to  protect 
our  natural  resources  and  our  standards  of  living  from 
exploitation  by  other  races,  but  we  must  set  about  the 
matter  systematically  and  work  out  intelligent  policies. 


340  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

We  must  think  about  the  future  of  the  race  and  less  about 
Tneimmeaiate  profits  to  be  made  by  exploiting  our  re 
sources  with  tne  aid  of  cheap  Jabpj\.. 

^The  whit(Trace  as  a  whole  is  increasing  in  numbers  as 
rapidly  as  it  can  take  care  of  them  and  preserve  its  stand 
ards  of  living.  What  is  needed  is  not  more  babies,  but 
a  better  distribution  of  babies  among  the  different 
classes  of  the  population.  This  is  the  surest  way  to 
progress  and  to  the  maintenance  of  leadership  among  the 
world's  peoples. 

The  welfare  of  our  race  demands  that  we  study  popula 
tion  in  all  its  manifold  phases.  Much  of  the  misery  of 
mankind  in  all  ages  has  been  due  to  the  fact  that  there 
were  too  many  mouths  to  feed.  If  we  are  to  ameliorate 
life  on  a  large  scale,  we  must  learn  how  to  preserve  a 
balance  between  the  number  of  people  and  their  ability 
to  produce  the  necessities  of  life. 


CHAPTER  24 

"THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  AGES" 

MR.  LOTHROP  STODDARD,  following  his  own 
methods  of  analysis,  declares  that  the  white  man 
to-day  faces  "the  crisis  of  the  ages."  The  so-called 
"Nordic  type,"  which  certain  writers  have  fancied  to  be 
the  supreme  triumph  of  evolution,  must  either  seize  the 
mastery  of  the  world  or  else  be  overwhelmed  by  the  "ris 
ing  tide  of  color."  But  Mr.  Thompson's  sober  survey 
in  the  preceding  chapter  exposes  this  tide  as  a  myth. 
There  remains  only  the  task  of  showing  that  the  "crisis 
of  the  ages"  is  even  more  completely  fictitious  than  Mr. 
Thompson  has  made  it  out  to  be. 

Mr.  Stoddard  seems  to  regard  the  whole  "crisis"  as  a 
matter  of  growing  population  and  a  steadily  unifying 
hatred  of  the  white  man's  domination.  Mr.  Thompson 
realizes  that  there  is  much  more  to  the  matter  than  these 
two  factors,  but  he  has  confined  his  observations  chiefly 
to  problems  of  population,  about  which  he  is  particularly 
informed.  To  round  the  discussion  off  properly,  we 
must  now  look  at  other  potent  influences,  by  far  the 
greatest  of  which  is  climate. 

First  of  all,  let  us  consider  the  possibilities  of  economic 
and  military  competition  in  the  yellow-brown  world. 
These  divide  sharply  into  two  groups:  the  first  have  to 
do  with  competition  within  the  territories  of  the  Far 

341 


342  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

East  and  the  second  with  competition  carried  by  the 
Asiatics  into  regions  now  occupied  by  men  of  European 
stock.  It  is  clear  that  we  have  here  two  radically  differ 
ent  problems  to  solve.  And  it  is  no  less  clear  that  writers 
like  Mr.  Stoddard  have  ignored  these  profound  differ 
ences,  thereby  confusing  the  entire  discussion. 

Now,  our  earlier  study  of  the  military  and  naval  dead 
lock  between  Japan  and  the  United  States  gives  us  the 
general  answer  to  the  question :  '  *  Can  the  Asiatics  drive 
Europe  from  the  Eastern  markets  and  from  political 
control  of  yellow-brown  peoples  ?"  Every  lesson  of  the 
World  War  seems  to  point  in  the  same  direction:  no 
Western  nation  can  retain  economic  or  political  power  in 
the  Far  East  any  longer  than  the  people  of  the  Far 
East  themselves  choose  to  let  them.  To  take  a  hypo 
thetical  case:  were  Great  Britain  challenged  to-morrow 
by  the  natives  of  India,  or  even  by  a  large  minority  of 
the  upper  commercial  and  political  classes,  the  British 
flag  would  come  down  everywhere  in  India  within  six 
months. 

But  when  is  such  a  revolt  likely  to  happen  ?  Again  our 
question  divides.  It  is  plain  that  discontent  over  politi 
cal  domination  by  the  white  man  is  now  spreading  much 
faster  than  is  any  hostility  to  the  white  man's  cotton 
mills  and  railroads  and  huge  investments.  The  British 
are  alive  to  this  fact,  and  some  of  their  clearest  thinkers 
in  Indian  affairs  have  told  me  that  they  are  prepared 
inwardly  to  step  out  almost  any  time  after  the  new 
Parliament  of  India  settles  down  to  business.  Such  a 
graceful  withdrawal,  however,  would  serve  to  strengthen 
their  commercial  position  in  the  country;  for  the  busi 
ness  men  of  India  know  how  much  their  land  needs  from 


"THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  AGES"  343 

the  factories  of  Europe.  They  understand  how  casual 
and  how  thin  is  the  new  industrialism  of  Asia.  In  com 
parison  with  that  of  the  West,  it  is  still  as  nothing.  Of 
this,  more  a  little  later. 

There  is  no  reason  for  supposing  that  the  political 
withdrawal  of  Great  Britain  from  India  and  the  treaty 
ports  of  China,  the  evacuation  of  the  East  Indies  by  the 
Dutch,  or  the  turning  over  of  the  Philippines  to  their 
inhabitants  by  our  own  Government  would  either  weaken 
the  white  man's  position  in  the  world  or  materially 
strengthen  that  of  the  Oriental  On  the  contrary,  scores 
of  business  men,  diplomatic  officials,  and  Americans  who 
have  lived  long  in  the  Far  East  come  close  to  agreeing 
that,  outside  of  Japan  and  North  China,  such  an  immense 
political  retreat  would  surely  throw  the  Asiatics  back 
into  demoralization  and  civil  wars  of  the  worst  sort. 
This  indeed  is  one  of  the  strongest  arguments  advanced 
by  our  own  American  business  interests  against  granting 
full  independence  to  the  Philippines.  And,  whether  it 
happens  to  be  true  respecting  those  islands  or  not,  it  is 
partly  so  of  India  and  Malaysia  and,  in  a  somewhat 
different  manner,  of  equatorial  Africa. 

All  white  observers  in  China  testify  that  the  chief 
obstacle  in  the  way  of  developing  a  modern  industrial 
and  commercial  civilization  there  is  the  extraordinary 
corruption  of  the  local  politicians  and  office-holders. 
These  people  interfere  with  legitimate  business  for  the 
sake  of  "  squeeze. "  Factories  are  packed  with  relatives 
of  the  powerful  bureaucrat.  Payrolls  are  padded  worse 
than  a  Chinaman's  overcoat.  Natives  force  themselves 
into  positions  of  authority,  through  "pull,"  and  then 
bungle  everything,  while  the  European  technical  ad- 


344  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

viser  twiddles  his  thumbs  in  helpless  rage  and  watches 
the  huge  investments  of  the  white  men  being  frittered 
away.  Even  the  Japanese  themselves,  who  should  have 
known  better,  have  lost  millions  of  dollars  in  China  in 
this  very  manner. 

Now,  political  habits  like  "squeeze"  and  nepotism  are 
very  hard  to  break  down,  especially  in  a  country  where 
everybody  lives  so  close  to  starvation  that  the  fight  for 
food  is  waged  with  animal  cunning.  Forty  years  of 
American  prosperity  have  not  yet  sufficed  to  eradicate 
this  same  habit  complex  from  the  low  pauper  Irish  who 
came  here  from  a  famine  country  and  wormed  their  way 
into  American  municipal  politics,  to  the  everlasting  con 
tamination  of  our  city  life.  So  we  may  be  sure  that  sev 
eral  generations  must  pass  before  the  Chinese  ward 
heelers  and  Tammany  bosses  will  be  driven  out  of  their 
present  strategic  position  and  cease  to  be  parasites  on 
private  business.  If  the  European  drops  his  present  po 
litical  control,  business  will  slip  further  and  further  into 
the  meshes  of  corruption,  and  hence  industrialism  will 
lag,  from  Shanghai  to  Singapore,  from  Singapore  to 
Suez.  If  industrialism  lags,  so  too  must  militarism  of 
the  modern  sort.  The  two  are  inseparable.  We  come 
therefore  to  the  conclusion  that,  if  the  peoples  of  Asia 
resume  full  control  of  their  political  affairs  in  the  near 
future,  they  will  tend  to  fall  much  further  behind  the 
white  race  in  both  economic  and  military  power.  This, 
be  it  repeated,  is  not  true  of  the  Japanese  and  the  north 
ern  Chinese,  at  least  in  anything  like  the  same  measure 
as  it  holds  for  the  rest  of  Asia. 

We  may  now  look  at  the  other  problem  of  competition. 
What  if  the  white  man  goes  on  building  factories,  schools, 


"THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  AGES"  345 

hospitals,  and  railroads  in  the  Far  East,  as  he  has  been 
for  the  past  half -century  ?  How  soon  will  he  uplift  the 
Asiatics  to  the  point  of  making  them  thoroughly  discon 
tented  with  their  lot  and  starting  them  on  a  tremendous 
migration  into  the  vast  empty  spaces  now  held  by  Russia, 
Austria,  and  the  Americas?  Is  this  li crisis  of  the  ages" 
already  at  hand? 

Frankly,  I  am  unable  to  see  this  peril  as  Mr.  Stoddard 
and  others  see  it.  I  cannot  see  it  even  on  the  wild  as 
sumption  that  the  entire  white  race  were  to  devote  all  its 
money  and  energy  to  industrializing  Asia  and  giving  all 
Asiatics  the  ideas  and  tastes  of  the  West.  The  more 
narrowly  I  inspect  even  the  new  civilization  of  Japan, 
which  is  immeasurably  superior  to  that  of  every  other 
Asiatic  nation,  the  clearer  it  becomes  that  it  has  barely 
grazed  the  surface  of  things.  The  life  of  Asia  is  still  of 
the  Middle  Ages  and  will  take  as  long  reaching  the  twen 
tieth  century  as  thirteenth-century  Europe  required. 
Civilization  is  altogether  too  vast  and  too  intricate  a 
web  of  intimate,  nicely  adjusted  group  habits  ever  to  be 
made  to  order  by  the  most  enterprising  political  hustler. 
And  like  all  other  late  products  of  human  evolution,  it  is 
as  easy  to  destroy  as  it  is  hard  to  create.  This  has  been 
tragically  demonstrated  in  Europe  since  1914.  And  I 
do  not  see  how  any  student  can  fail  to  see  what  it  implies 
with  regard  to  the  future  of  Asia. 

It  is  pretty  conservative  to  state  that  in  Europe,  in 
1914,  not  more  than  five  or  six  per  cent  of  the  total  popu 
lation  were  moderately  civilized,  in  the  sense  in  which 
we  Americans  understand  civilization.  We  measure  civi 
lization  by  the  total  standard  of  living  and  the  efficiency 
of  the  social  and  industrial  mechanisms  which  maintain 


346  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

that  standard.  Perhaps  this  is  not  the  highest  and  best 
method  of  measurement,  but  it  is  certainly  more  reliable 
than  any  other  method  that  has  been  suggested.  Using 
it,  we  find  that  Europe  as  a  whole  stood  far  below  us  in 
most  of  the  essentials,  such  as  food  supply,  standards  of 
hygiene,  care  of  infants,  honesty  and  efficiency  in  politics 
and  diplomacy,  the  political  intelligence  of  the  masses, 
community  of  interests,  ease  of  intellectual  intercourse 
through  one  language  and  one  press,  weakness  of  class 
lines,  and  so  on.  A  few  small  parts  of  the  continent  were 
superior  to  us  in  some  respects,  but  that  advantage  was 
more  than  offset  by  the  appalling  degradation  of  most 
of  Eastern  Europe  and  many  Mediterranean  lands. 
When  Europe  was  five  or  six  per  cent  civilized,  we  were 
possibly  ten  to  fifteen  per  cent  civilized.  Now,  even  in 
her  present  demoralization  and  misery,  Europe  as  a 
whole  is  immeasurably  better  off  and  more  completely 
civilized  than  Asia;  and  probably  even  superior  to 
Japan,  though  this  is  debatable.  Her  railroads  are  in 
ruin,  but  even  so  she  has  better  transportation  than  Asia. 
Three  million  children  are  starving  in  the  Central  Em 
pires,  but  in  North  China  alone  twenty  millions  will  die 
of  hunger  this  winter;  and  India  has  just  gone  through 
a  hideous  famine  whose  toll  has  not  yet  been  measured. 
Machines  are  worn  out  and  factories  in  dilapidation,  but 
still  there  are  a  hundred  good  ones  for  every  one  in  all 
Asia.  Men  and  women  are  still  underfed  in  many  dis 
tricts  where  there  is  no  true  famine ;  but  all  of  Asia  has 
always  been  undernourished,  and  there  are  tens  of  mil 
lions  who,  from  the  day  of  their  birth,  have  never  eaten 
what  we  should  call  a  square  meal. 
Now,  even  the  optimists  who  have  studied  the  present 


"THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  AGES"  347 

European  crisis  declare  that  the  continent  will  not  be 
able  to  reach  the  level  of  prosperity  and  social  order  of 
1914  in  much  less  than  fifty  years.  The  pessimists  set 
the  period  at  a  century  or  longer.  Let  us  side  with  the 
optimists  for  argument's  sweet  sake.  What  does  their 
testimony  imply  as  to  Asia?  It  implies  that 

//  the  inhabitants  of  Asia  were  to  begin  to-morrow 
reconstructing  their  continent  with  the  same  energy  and 
the  same  intelligence  now  being  used  by  Europeans,  they 
could  not  hope  to  attain  even  the  level  of  power  amd 
civilization  of  devastated  Europe  in  less  than  two  or  three 
generations.  And  to  equal  the  present  development  of 
North  America,  they  would  require  several  centuries. 

My  assumption  here  is  absurd,  of  course.  Asiatics 
cannot  apply  the  same  energy  and  intelligence  to  such  a 
hypothetical  task  as  the  Europeans  can,  for  the  excellent 
reason  that  nine  out  of  ten  of  them  do  not  possess  such, 
while  those  few  who  do  are  scattered  over  a  dozen  coun 
tries  covering  areas  as  vast  as  North  and  South  America 
combined,  and  have  no  community  of  interests  and  no 
basis  of  effective  cooperation.  They  speak  languages 
that  differ  from  one  another  even  more  than  English 
differs  from  Russian.  They  follow  political  practices 
that  differ  nearly  as  much  as  Bolshevism  differs  from 
French  republicanism.  They  have  correspondingly  dif 
ferent  wants  and  needs.  And,  above  all,  as  I  shall  point 
out  fully  in  a  moment,  they  divide  into  the  two  most 
widely  differing  of  all  human  groups,  the  temperate-zone 
peoples  and  the  tropical.  Geographically,  mentally,  eco 
nomically,  and  socially,  the  peoples  of  the  great  continent 
are  held  apart  much  more  than  the  old  feudists  of  the 
Balkan  States.  And  we  might  as  well  expect  the  Balkans 


348  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

to  rise  up  and  outstrip  Western  Europe  as  to  expect 
Asia  to.  Personally,  I  am  convinced  that  the  Balkans 
will  be  as  far  advanced  as  New  England  at  least  two  cen 
turies  earlier  than  China  reaches  the  present  low  level  of 
Italy. 

When  we  reckon  fairly  with  the  political  corruption, 
the  inevitable  losses  of  immense  investments  through  bad 
management,  the  difficulties  of  language,  and  the  absence 
of  unified  planning  and  control  in  all  Asia  except  Japan 
and  the  Dutch  East  Indies,  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that 
things  will  move  ahead  any  faster  hereafter  than  they 
have  been  in  the  past  quarter-century.  And  although 
the  progress  made  in  that  time  in  Japan  and  North 
China  has  been  startling,  nevertheless  it  is  as  nothing 
when  compared  to  what  remains  to  be  accomplished. 
And  the  prospect  that  it  will  eventually  spread  over  all 
Asia  fades  into  an  empty  dream,  as  soon  as  we  take  into 
consideration  the  greatest  of  all  factors  in  the  situation, 
namely,  climate.  The  most  cursory  study  of  it  must  con 
vince  anybody  save  a  professional  ' '  yellow-perilist ' '  that 
the  sun  will  take  care  of  the  " crisis  of  the  ages"  and 
evaporate  ' '  the  rising  tide  of  color. ' ' 

Few  observers  fail  to  note  a  very  close  and  far-reaching 
connection  between  man's  behavior  and  the  climate  he 
works  and  thinks  in.  Many  of  us  would  go  almost  as  far 
as  Ellsworth  Huntington  in  maintaining  that  tempera 
ture  and  humidity  set  hard  and  fast  limits  to  physical 
and  intellectual  activity,  determining  even  the  kind  of 
civilization  that  may  arise  in  various  parts  of  the  world. 
In  his  fascinating  study, ' '  Civilization  and  Climate, ' '  Mr. 
Huntington  sums  up  an  extraordinary  array  of  minute 
observations  covering  all  parts  of  the  world ;  and,  what- 


"THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  AGES"  349 

ever  exception  may  be  taken  to  some  of  his  detailed 
interpretations,  the  central  thesis  is  here  overwhelmingly 
established  that  all  extremes  of  either  temperature  or 
humidity  retard  or  otherwise  disturb  the  minds  and  mus 
cles  of  men.  Great  heat,  intense  cold,  desert  dryness, 
and  extreme  moisture  all  prevent  us  from  carrying  on 
active,  constructive  work  at  the  high  level  attained  by 
people  who  live  in  regions  where  there  is  a  moderate 
humid  temperature  coupled  with  a  daily  variation  that 
suffices  to  act  as  a  stimulant.  When  we  apply  these  gen 
eral  findings  to  the  question  at  hand,  the  results  are  sur 
prising — and  yet  precisely  in  line  with  the  common- 
sense  verdicts  of  thousands  of  white  men  who  have  tried 
to  operate  mills  and  plantations  in  the  tropics  or  in  a 
good  part  of  sub-tropical  China  and  India.  And  we  see 
how  nature  conspires  with  the  white  man  to  leave  the 
mastery  of  the  world  in  his  hands,  for  better  or  for  worse. 
Where  it  is  hot,  day  and  night,  for  a  large  part  of  the 
year,  and  where  the  air  is  heavy,  there  even  the  few  men 
of  high  natural  energy  cannot  hold  a  pace  equal  to  the 
average  inhabitant  of  a  cooler  climate.  The  farmers  in 
the  fields  move  slowly  and  accomplish  little.  The  fac 
tory  hand  dawdles  over  his  machine.  Various  white  em 
ployers  of  labor  in  the  tropics  estimate  the  efficiency  of 
people  there  at  from  one-third  to  one-fifth  that  of  the 
ordinary  temperate  zone  worker.  And  students  of  tropi 
cal  medicine  find  reasons  for  believing  that  the  indolence 
and  sluggishness  in  the  hot  belt  is  a  form  of  chronic  neu 
rasthenia.  In  his  study  of  what  happens  to  white  men 
who  go  to  the  tropics  to  live,  Huntington  records  three 
further  forms  of  physical  and  mental  disintegration  be 
sides  laziness.  They  are  loss  of  will  power,  drunkenness. 


350  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

and  sexual  laxity.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  these  last  two  are 
merely  special  consequences  of  the  first,  in  the  main.  Of 
them  all,  Huntington  remarks : 

"The  English  officer  who  returns  from  India  is  commonly 
described  as  'choleric/  Every  traveler  in  tropical  countries 
knows  that  he  sometimes  bursts  into  anger  in  a  way  that  makes 
him  utterly  ashamed.  .  .  . 

"The  drunkenness  of  the  tropical  white  man  arises  in  part 
from  the  constant  heat  which  makes  people  want  to  drink  at 
all  times,  partly  from  the  monotony  of  life,  and  still  more  from 
the  absence  of  social  restraints.  .  .  ." 

To  which  last  should  be  added  that  the  abominable 
and  often  infected  drinking  water  in  most  parts  of  the 
tropics  figures  as  a  convenient  excuse  for  endless  alco 
holism.  And  then  both  the  heat  and  the  alcoholism  drive 
the  victim  on  to  sexual  degradation,  of  which  Hunting- 
ton  says, 

"Its  importance  can  scarcely  be  overestimated.  It  leads  to 
the  ruin  of  thousands  of  northerners,  even  though  they  do  not 
yield  to  drink,  anger,  or  to  laziness.  .  .  .  The  condition  of  the 
native  races  is  still  worse.  Everywhere  within  the  tropics 
missionaries  say  that  their  converts  can  be  taught  honesty, 
industry,  and  many  other  virtues,  but  that  even  the  strongest 
find  it  almost  impossible  to  resist  the  temptations  of  sex.  .  .  . 
Gouldsbury  and  Sheane,  for  example,  say  of  the  Zulus  in 
northern  Rhodesia  that  one  of  the  greatest  reasons  why  these 
people  remain  so  backward  is  that  their  thought  and  energy 
are  largely  swallowed  up  in  matters  of  sex.  During  the  years 
when  the  young  men  ought  to  be  getting  new  ideas  and  thinking 
out  the  many  little  projects  and  the  few  great  ones  which 
combine  to  cause  progress,  the  vast  majority  are  thinking  of 
women,  and  planning  to  get  possession  of  some  new  woman  or 


"THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  AGES"  351 

girl.  Under  such  circumstances  no  race  can  rise  to  any  high 
position." 

This  startlingly  confirms  all  the  evidence  about  the 
negroes  of  our  own  far  South.  And  the  very  same  words 
might  be  written  about  the  Spanish  and  Portuguese  in 
habitants  of  tropical  South  America,  where  a  depth  of 
sexual  laxity  has  been  reached  that  staggers  the  visitor 
from  cooler  climes.  It  is  this  effect  of  the  humid  heat 
which  is  directly  responsible  for  the  complete  breakdown 
of  class  and  color  lines  from  Cuba  to  Bolivia.  Some 
innocent  intellectuals  writing  for  northern  publications 
have  occasionally  hailed  this  racial-social  promiscuity  as 
evidence  of  a  fine  democratic  instinct  and  have  held  it 
up  as  worthy  of  emulation ;  all  of  which  shows  how  easy 
it  is  for  educated  people  to  make  fools  of  themselves.  If 
they  had  known,  for  instance,  that  the  illegitimate  chil 
dren  in  Cuba  outnumber  the  legitimate  five  to  one,  they 
might  have  paused  a  moment  and  studied  the  facts. 
Latin  America  is  a  cesspool,  nothing  less ;  and  thousands 
of  whites  there  have  had  all  their  original  stamina  burned 
out  of  them.  It  is  only  in  the  extreme  south  of  Brazil,  in 
Uruguay,  and  in  Argentine  that  the  white  man  has  held 
his  own ;  and  those  regions  are  temperate,  not  tropic. 

Parallel  with  this  runs  a  curious  tendency  in  the  tropic 
and  sub-tropic  races  to  ''talk  big  and  do  little/'  I  have 
this  statement  from  more  than  a  score  of  men  who  have 
lived  and  managed  workers  in  India,  South  America, 
South  China,  and  the  Philippines.  Such  a  habit  is  not  to 
be  construed  as  ordinary  braggadocio.  It  is  not  moral 
weakness.  It  is  simply  the  psychological  result  of  pos 
sessing  a  healthy  nervous  system  and  an  active  mind  in 
a  place  where  heat  makes  sustained  physical  or  mental 


352  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

exertion  virtually  impossible.  There  is  always  the  inner 
impulse  to  do  things.  This  impulse  is,  when  elaborated, 
a  series  of  bright  ideas.  '  *  I  will  buy  a  farm.  We  must 
build  a  boat.  It  would  be  fine  if  we  had  a  new  town 
hall."  And  so  on.  When  the  bright  ideas  have  all 
been  developed,  it  is  time  for  action.  The  work  of  the 
central  nervous  system  is  largely  over,  and  the  toil  of 
the  muscles  begins.  But  here,  alas,  the  bright  ideas 
encounter  a  thermometer  that  insists  upon  registering 
ninety  in  the  shade,  week  in,  week  out.  The  limp  body 
refuses  to  carry  out  the  orders  of  the  mind.  And  the 
bright  ideas  go  glimmering.  This  is  the  tragedy  of  the 
tropics.  It  is  also  the  white  man's  salvation. 

In  the  accompanying  map  I  have  indicated  roughly  the 
way  the  whole  world  divides  into  regions  of  high  initia 
tive  and  regions  of  low  initiative.  I  have  further  indi 
cated  those  sections  of  the  regions  of  high  initiative 
which  are  now  inhabited  by  the  whites,  and  those  now 
filled  by  the  brown-yellows.  The  thinly  settled  deserts 
and  mountain  chains  have  been  disregarded.  The  most 
casual  inspection  of  the  distribution  brings  out  some  re 
markable  facts. 

All  of  the  black  race  amd  nearly  all  of  the  yellow  and 
brown  races  dwell  in  the  torrid  belt  of  low  initiative. 

The  only  members  of  the  yellow  race  living  in  regions 
of  high  initiative  are  the  Northern  Chinese  and  the 
Japanese. 

Do  you  not  begin  to  see  how  it  has  come  to  pass,  as  Mr. 
Thompson  has  so  clearly  demonstrated,  that  so  many 
millions  of  babies  are  brought  into  the  Asiatic  world,  only 
to  die  in  infancy,  while  among  the  white  races  the  birth 
rate  is,  on  the  whole,  considerably  lower  and  the  survival 


353 


354  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

rate  immensely  higher  ?  Is  it  not  forced  home  upon  yon 
that  the  peoples  of  Asia  are,  in  their  complex  life  habits, 
overwhelmingly  influenced  by  the  air,  sun,  and  water  of 
their  environment  ?  And  that  this  influence  is  a  terrible 
one  that  must  retard  them  and  their  descendants  cruelly 
in  the  long,  hard  struggle  toward  life,  liberty,  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness  ? 

Asia,  south  of  the  thirtieth  parallel,  is  at  a  standstill, 
so  far  as  social  and  political  life  is  concerned.  If  you 
draw  a  line  across  the  continent  from  Shanghai  due  west 
to  any  point  well  beyond  India,  the  bulk  of  the  yellow- 
brown  races  will  lie  south  of  the  line,  in  lands  where  the 
heat  burns  the  will  out  of  almost  every  man,  and  where 
nobody  expects  anybody  else  to  bother  very  much  over 
anything.  Life  is  cheap.  Time  is  cheap.  Thoughts  are 
little  flies  that  buzz  brightly  and  die  at  sundown. 
Morals  simply  aren't.  And  not  all  the  poetry  of  Kip 
ling  nor  the  prose  of  Conrad  can  gloss  over  the  dirt,  lazi 
ness,  evil,  and  superstition  that  besmear  southern  Asia. 

In  all  the  world  there  live  about  950,000,000  yellows 
and  browns.  Of  this  horde  fully  700,000,000  inhabit 
the  hot-humid  and  the  hot-arid  zones  of  low  initiative. 
Only  250,000,000  dwell  in  the  temperate  zones  of  high 
initiative. 

Until  that  far-off  day  arrives,  when  science  and  com 
mercial  enterprise  shall  have  devised  ways  and  means 
of  keeping  the  tropical  laborer  cool  and  invigorated,  we 
may  totally  disregard  the  700,000,000  southern  Asiatics 
and  Malaysians  in  our  political  reckoning.  It  is  simply 
inconceivable  that  any  organized  invasion  of  white  lands 
can  initiate  in  this  weather-stricken  mass ;  and  it  is  only 
a  fantastic  possibility  that  they  might  join  some  leader 


"THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  AGES"  355 

from  the  yellow  north  in  such  a  mad  enterprise.  Such 
prospects  can  be  seriously  entertained  only  by  people 
who  have  not  minutely  studied  the  geography  of  Asia 
and  the  psychology  and  physiology  of  tropical  life. 

Arrayed,  now,  against  the  250,000,000  yellow-brown 
group  of  high  initiative  we  find,  as  Mr.  Thompson  has 
shown,  something  like  635,000,000  whites,  of  whom  fully 
610.000,000  live  in  temperate  climes  and  display  pretty 
much  the  same  energy  and  political  sense  as  the  North 
Atlantic  peoples.  To  make  the  contrast  a  degree  more 
accurate,  we  must  note  that  the  yellow-brown  group  is 
to-day  split  into  two  classes  bitterly  hostile  toward  each 
other  from  time  immemorial.  Some  60,000,000  Japanese 
are  opposed  to  18,000,000  Koreans,  all  eager  to  slay  any 
Japanese  if  no  officer  is  looking,  and  more  than  170,000,- 
000  northern  Chinese,  who  hate  the  spry  islanders  as 
whole-heartedly  as  the  Sinn  Feiner  hates  England. 

Having  dismissed  the  thought  of  a  military  advance 
into  lands  now  occupied  by  whites  as  too  wild  to  be  de 
bated,  we  have  left  on  our  hands  only  the  possibility  of 
a  slow  infiltration,  year  by  year,  generation  by  genera 
tion,  into  Australia,  Russia,  and  the  Americas.  May  it 
not  happen  that  the  Chinese,  for  instance,  who  are  now 
overflowing  at  the  rate  of  about  a  million  a  year  into 
Mongolia  and  several  hundred  thousands  a  year  into  the 
Malay  Peninsula  and  the  Malaysian  islands,  may  even 
tually  reach  Siberia  and  perhaps,  in  five  or  six  genera 
tions,  fill  that  immense  territory? 

Mr.  Thompson  has  already  answered  this  question. 
Certainly,  such  an  overflow  might  happen,  if  we  choose 
to  allow  it.  It  lies  entirely  within  the  power  of  our 
governments.  If  blocked  by  adequate  immigration  laws, 


356  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

backed  up  by  sound  administration,  the  southern  Asi 
atics  will  either  spread  into  Africa — which,  in  my  opin 
ion,  would  be  the  salvation  of  that  now  hopeless  conti 
nent — or  else  they  will  very  slowly  learn  to  adjust  their 
life  habits  to  home  conditions  so  as  to  keep  their  own 
numbers  down  and  make  life  more  nearly  worth  living. 
Meanwhile,  the  white  races  will  inevitably  act  under  the 
spur  of  their  climate  and  their  ancient  commercial  and 
political  habits,  as  well  as  their  immense  opportunities. 
And  with  only  a  little  increase  of  intelligent  control  over 
themselves  and  over  nature,  they  will  become  in  fact 
what  they  are  now  in  promise  and  intent,  lords  of  the 
world — whether1  they  deserve  it  or  not. 

In  this  calculation,  Russia  is  obviously  the  obscure  and 
dangerous  factor.  Will  she  block  the  Asiatic?  Let  us 
consider  the  worst  possibility.  Even  if  Russia  were  to 
throw  down  the  bars  to  Asiatics,  the  migrations  that 
would  ensue  would  be  very  different  from  those  which 
Mr.  Stoddard  depicts.  There  are  two  general  facts 
about  the  movements  of  people  that  all  history  uniformly 
confirms.  And  neither  seems  to  have  entered  into  Mr. 
Stoddard 's  calculations.  One  is  that,  when  under  no 
compulsion  (political  or  physical),  migrants  tend  to  fol 
low  their  native  isotherms  with  no  wide  variation.  The 
other  is  that  movements  out  of  such  isotherms  have,  so 
far  as  records  show,  been  always  from  the  cool  toward 
the  hot,  never  from  the  hot  to  the  cool.  The  Scandina 
vians  emigrate  to  Canada,  our  own  Northwest,  or  Russia. 
Although  the  Italians  are  near  good  undeveloped  lands  in 
North  Africa,  very  few  go  thither;  the  masses  move  in 
three  directions,  all  following  the  Italian  isotherms  quite 
closely:  to  Argentine,  to  the  central  and  southern  zones 


"THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  AGES"  357 

of  the  United  States,  and  to  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor. 
Tropical  South  America  holds  stupendous  tracts  of  fer 
tile  soil  and  even  passably  inhabitable  plateaus ;  but  few 
are  the  temperate-zoners  who  have  £one  thither.  The 
entire  continent  is  still  predominantly  Indian.  As  to 
day,  so  ever  in  the  past.  Had  we  the  space,  we  might 
recall  here  the  great  folk-movements  from  the  earliest 
days  in  the  Mesopotamian  Valley  down  to  the  last  drives 
of  the  old  Turks  into  eastern  Europe;  and  in  each 
instance  we  should  see  either  a  shift  from  one  place  to 
another  of  the  same  general  climatic  type  or  else,  less 
frequently,  as  in  the  great  Teutonic  invasions  of  the 
Mediterranean  countries,  a  shift  from  cool  to  warm 
places.  And  we  should  find  no  case  of  a  wholesale  mi 
gration  from  cool  to  tropic  nor  from  tropic  to  cool.  All 
of  which  is  no  accident  but  rather  an  obvious  consequence 
of  two  things;  first,  the  geographic  difficulties,  in  both 
Asia  and  Europe,  of  passing  from  temperate  to  torrid 
districts ;  and,  secondly,  that  same  stability  of  elemental 
life  habits  which  I  have  mentioned  so  frequently.  The 
bodily  adjustments  to  food  intake,  food  assimilation, 
sleep,  work,  thinking,  and  so  on  are  profoundly  different 
in  cool  and  in  hot  regions.  And  man  instinctively  re 
sents  and  resists  anything  that  forces  him  to  change  them 
even  when  the  change  does  not  seriously  affect  his  health, 
as  it  often  does. 

This  is  why  we  need  never  fear  that  India  and  South 
China  will  ever  send  their  millions  of  superfluous  humans 
into  Russia  and  Europe.  These  hordes  will  move  around 
the  torrid  belt.  The  Hindu  started  out  for  Africa  only 
a  few  years  ago  and  would  now  be  there  in  masses  but 
for  the  outcry  of  the  whites  in  Cape  Colony,  who  saw 


358  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

themselves  being  drowned  out  and  forthwith  raised  the 
bars  against  the  wanderer.  Some  day  those  bars  must 
come  down ;  and  when  they  do,  the  Dark  Continent  will 
begin  changing  from  black  to  brown,  to  its  own  great 
gain.  Eventually  th"  south  Chinese  will  probably  filter 
into  tropical  South  America,  as  they  are  now  moving 
again  into  Cuba.  And  they  may  even  crowd  into  Mex 
ico  and  there  greatly  improve  the  country  by  their  amaz 
ing  perseverance  and  thrift.  Whether  Hindu  and 
Chinaman  ever  succeed  in  breaking  into  the  terrible  trop 
ics  of  northern  Australia  remains  to  be  seen.  Certain 
it  is,  though,  that  no  white  Australians  will  ever  thrive 
there. 

These  same  general  principles  of  migration  lead  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  temperate-zone  yellow  peoples  of 
Japan  and  North  China  will  certainly  follow  the  path  of 
least  resistance  westward  into  Mongolia  and  Siberia  just 
as  long  and  just  as  far  as  they  can  push  'on  by  hook  or  by 
crook.  This  is  as  sure  as  to-morrow's  sunrise.  And  we 
ought  to  accept  it  as  one  of  the  fundamental  facts  on 
which  we  must  build  our  national  policy  with  respect  to 
these  alert,  energetic,  and  brilliant  cool-weather  Asiatics. 
Whatever  we  may  believe  as  to  racial  differences,  we 
have  to  admit  that  the  environment  of  these  northern 
groups  has  brought  out  in  them  all  of  those  traits  which 
we  profess  to  admire  most  in  ourselves ;  and  these  traits 
are  bound  to  sweep  them  westward  along  the  cool-weather 
belt  of  Asia,  no  matter  what  moves  our  diplomats  and 
our  generals  make.  In  an  earlier  chapter  I  have  pointed 
out  the  cool  contempt  with  which  the  Japanese  Govern 
ment  countered  the  protest  of  our  State  Department 
over  the  recent  occupation  of  northern  Sakhalin.  And 


"THE  CRISIS  OF  THE  AGES"  359 

I  do  not  hesitate  to  predict  that  the  Japanese  will  pay 
less  and  less  heed  to  foreign  complaints  as  time  goes  on. 
In  the  face  of  the  hunger  of  masses  and  the  urge  to  seek 
a  decent  living,  all  man-written  law  is  but  a  scrap  of 
paper.  The  most  you  can  do  with  it  is  to  light  a  fire 
that  burns  up  whole  civilizations. 

It  would  be  futile  to  conjecture  what  obstacles  Russia 
may  place  in  the  way  of  Japanese  and  Chinese  infiltra 
tion.  Nobody  in  America  knows  much  about  the  present 
state  of  public  opinion  in  that  strange  land.  In  so  far 
as  we  can  judge  from  the  past,  however,  we  may  hazard 
the  very  vague  guess  that  the  Russians  are  friendly  to 
the  Chinese  and  welcome  them  in  Siberia,  while  disliking 
the  trickier  Japanese,  who  has  made  himself  twice  hated 
by  the  monstrous  blunders  his  militarists  committed  in 
seizing  the  whole  of  Siberia  east  of  Lake  Baikal  during 
the  war  and  running  up  the  flag  of  the  mikado,  just  as 
if  annexation  were  completed.  For  some  years  to  come, 
then,  it  may  happen  that  the  Chinese  will  trickle  west 
ward  unhindered,  while  every  political  obstacle  will  be 
laid  athwart  the  path  of  the  Japanese.  In  sixty  years 
from  now  the  temperate-zone  yellow  peoples  will,  with 
freer  expansion  into  Siberia  than  seems  reasonable  to 
anticipate,  have  doubled  their  numbers.  There  will  be 
something  like  500,000,000  of  them,  making  no  deductions 
for  special  limiting  factors.  And  what  of  the  whites 
then?  Will  the  "crisis  of  the  ages"  have  exterminated 
them?  Mr.  Thompson's  calculations  do  not  suggest  it. 
Neither  do  those  of  any  other  well  informed  statistician. 
In  1980  the  white  race  will  probably  be  running  very 
close  to  the  billion-and-a-quarter  mark.  And,  if  Russia 
gets  on  her  feet  in  another  twenty  years,  this  mark  will 


360  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

almost  certainly  be  passed.  For  the  splendid  educa 
tional  program  now  being  carried  out  under  grave  han 
dicaps  all  over  Russia  cannot  fail  to  reduce  the  death- 
rate  pronouncedly;  but  the  birth-rate,  as  Mr.  Thompson 
has  shown,  will  remain  virtually  fixed  for  at  least  a 
generation  or  two. 

One  fairly  certain  element  in  this  anticipation  remains 
to  be  stressed.  It  is  the  difficulty  the  Japanese  find  in 
adapting  to  the  continental  winters.  I  have  already  al 
luded  to  this  fact,  which  has  been  noted  by  many  Ameri 
can  observers  and  has  been  dwelt  upon  openly  by  the 
Japanese  themselves.  The  prolonged  zero  weather  and 
the  frightful  winds  shatter  their  morale  very  much  as  the 
same  general  weather  conditions  upset  many  whites,  espe 
cially  the  women,  in  the  plains  of  Montana,  Wyoming, 
and  the  Canadian  Northwest.  It  may  be  taken  as  certain 
that  no  Japanese  will  migrate  into  Siberia  of  their  own 
accord,  except  as  traders  or  professional  men  attached  to 
large  enterprises,  such  as  mines,  railroads,  fisheries,  and 
so  on.  None  will  go  as  farmers,  trappers,  or  unskilled 
laborers  in  outdoor  work.  And  this  will  tend  powerfully 
to  hold  down  the  total  of  yellow  emigrants. 

For  all  these  many  reasons,  then,  we  cannot  advise 
anybody  to  lose  much  sleep  over  the  ' i  crisis  of  the  ages. ' ' 
There  are  many  other  crises  much  nearer  at  hand  and 
considerably  more  perilous.  One  of  them  is  the  "yellow 
peril"  on  our  American  farms. 


CHAPTER  25 
A   PROPOSED   INTERNATIONAL  POLICY 

WE  have  now  reached  the  end  of  a  survey  which 
must  have  discouraged  the  reader  more  than  once, 
with  its  many  digressions  into  technical  matters.  And 
the  question  confronts  us :  What  can  we,  what  ought  we, 
do  about  it  all? 

This  may  be  approached  and  answered  in  two  ways. 
One  is  the  way  of  the  opportunistic  diplomat.  The  other 
is  the  way  of  the  scientific  statesman.  The  opportunistic 
diplomat  is  a  very  real  character.  There  are  many  of 
him.  And  they  are  in  charge  of  the  whole  Japanese 
crisis,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  business  men  and  ex 
perts  of  Europe  and  America  are  pretty  well  agreed,  as 
a  result  of  the  World  War,  that  such  officials  are  inca 
pable  of  managing  large  affairs.  The  scientific  states 
man  is  still  an  imaginary  creature.  But  there  are  hopes 
that  by  dint  of  hard  wishing  some  country  will,  before 
long,  call  him  into  flesh-and-blood  existence. 

$ow,  the  opportunistic  diplomat  is  solving  the  Japa 
nese  crisis  at  this  very  moment  by  a  new  "  gentlemen 's 
agreement"  which  dodges  the  deeper  issues,  glosses  over 
the  present  estrangements  and  menaces,  and  puts  off  a 
trouble  which,  if  handled  to-day  in  a  scientific  manner, 
might  easily  be  solved,  but,  if  deferred  for  many  years, 
will  get  out  of  hand,  precisely  as  our  negro  problem  is 

361 


362  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

now  out  of  hand  forever.  It  wll  not  satisfy  the  white 
Calif  ornians.  It  will  not  please  the  Japanese  either  here 
or  in  Japan.  It  betrays  the  Filipinos,  if,  as  is  reported 
from  Washington  in  these  last  days,  the  program  calls 
for  the  admission  of  Japanese  laborers  into  the  Philip 
pines.  And  it  can  end  only  by  making  those  islands, 
Hawaii,  and  our  Pacific  Coast  yellow,  thereby  adding  a 
second  unmanageable  race  issue  to  a  first  unmanageable 
one. 

But  how  might  a  statesman  attack  the  problem? 
What  method  might  he  hit  upon  which  was  no  mere 
"gentlemen's  agreement "  but  rather  a  scientist's  ver 
dict  ?  I  think  the  facts  we  have  been  reviewing  give  at 
least  a  partial  answer  to  this  large  question ;  and  if  they 
do  not  map  the  program,  at  least  they  point  out  the  gen 
eral  direction  that  must  be  taken. 

A  scientific  analysis  of  the  whole  Japanese  crisis  re 
veals  that  it  is  the  consequence  of  three  other  crises,  each 
world-wide  and  extraordinarily  complex  both  in  its 
causes  and  its  possible  remedies.  They  are : 

1.  A  dangerous  increase  of  population  in  the  white  race 
and  the  north-temperate  yellow  group ; 

2.  A  dangerously  unbalanced  system  of  world  food 
production  and  food  distribution,  in  relation  to  both  the 
distribution  and  the  growth  of  world  population ;  and 

3.  A  dangerously  rapid  shift  in  standards  of  living, 
chiefly  in  America  and  Japan. 

Now,  no  "gentlemen's  agreement"  will  take  care  of 
the  600,000  or  700,000  extra  Japanese  who  are  annually 
added  to  the  world's  population,  and  still  less  will  it 
provide  for  the  extra  1,000,000  Americans.  The  scien 
tific  statesman  squarely  faces  the  fact  that  every  twelve 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      363 

months  Japan  and  the  United  States  combined  present 
him  with  a  new  city  as  large  as  Philadelphia,  to  be  fed 
and  cared  for  in  a  hundred  ways.  He  cannot  long  con 
template  this  appalling  problem  without  coming  to  real 
ize  that  uncontrolled  population  growth  leads  to  war  and 
famine,  intensification  of  racial  antagonisms,  the  propa 
gation  of  many  unfit  types,  and  the  elimination  of  many 
of  the  most  fit.  He  will  find  that  the  mere  piling  up  of 
numbers  is  not  the  highest  end  of  human  endeavor. 
Progress  and  achievement  are  dependent  upon  making 
the  most  complete  possible  use  of  the  spiritual  resources 
of  men  rather  than  upon  filling  the  earth  with  unlimited 
numbers  who  will  eke  out  a  precarious  and  miserable 
existence. 

The  leaders  of  thought  and  opinion  in  Japan  must  be 
brought  to  realize  that  they  cannot  hope  to  gain  relief 
from  their  present  acute  over-population  merely  by  imi 
tating  the  earlier  colonial  policies  of  the  great  European 
powers.  That  is,  they  cannot  relieve  the  pressure  at 
home  by  sending  their  surplus  millions  to  far  lands.  All 
the  evidence  as  to  movements  of  population  in  both 
Europe  and  Asia  points  to  one  conclusion ;  namely,  that, 
as  fast  as  men  leave  a  country  that  is  congested,  the  re 
lief  there  caused  by  their  departure  stimulates  either  the 
birth-rate  or  the  survival  rate  (or  both)  in  a  variety  of 
ways ;  so  that  in  a  short  time  the  old  maximum  of  popu 
lation  is  attained,  congestion  sets  in  again,  and  the  whole 
process  is  repeated.  China,  as  well  known,  has  been 
pouring  forth  men  by  the  millions  for  many  years.  They 
are  now  moving  into  Mongolia  at  the  rate  of  about  a 
million  a  year.  Many  more  millions  have  streamed  south 
ward  into  Malaysia,  where  they  are  dominant  in  business 


364  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

and  have  usurped  many  of  the  choicest  districts.  And 
yet  China's  population  is  as  large  as  it  was  generations 
ago.  So,  too,  with  England.  For  two  hundred  years 
her  sons  left  her  in  shiploads  and  built  up  the  United 
States,  Canada,  and  Australia ;  and  yet  to-day  the  mother 
country  has  millions  more  than  before  this  colossal  emi 
gration  began.  And  now,  even  after  the  terrible  losses 
of  war  and  influenza,  Great  Britain  is  planning  officially 
to  send  a  million  of  her  sons  and  daughters  overseas  to 
the  Dominions,  where  life  will  be  easier. 

The  same  can  be  shown  of  Germany,  Italy,  and  Rus 
sia.  And  the  same  will  happen  to  Japan  if  no  other 
more  scientific  steps  are  taken  to  wrestle  with  the  prob 
lem.  For  this  reason  the  United  States  ought  not  to 
admit  as  a  valid  argument  in  favor  of  our  accepting  a 
swarm  of  Japanese  immigrants,  Japan's  pressing  need 
to  be  rid  of  these  people.  We  should  rather  request 
Japan  to  take  prompt  steps  to  control  the  size  of  her 
population  through  birth  restrictions  such  as  the  upper 
economic  classes  of  Europe  and  America  practise. 

Certainly  the  Japanese  Government,  if 'it  saw  fit  to  do 
so,  could  advance  much  more  rapidly  in  the  direction  of 
scientific  eugenics  than  our  own  country  can.  The  Jap 
anese  people  lean  upon  their  rulers  more  completely, 
trust  them  more,  and  take  orders  from  them  with  better 
grace  than  do  the  present  inhabitants  of  the  United 
States,  whose  lawlessness  and  almost  savage  individual 
ism  have  grown  rather  than  declined  of  late.  Social 
habits,  especially  such  intimate  ones  as  those  which  are 
connected  with  birth-rate  and  survival  rate,  suffer  a 
change  with  extreme  slowness  at  best ;  and  it  is  doubtful 
if  they  would  change  at  any  perceptible  rate,  were  no 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      365 

large  organized  educational  campaign  or  no  official  pres 
sure  brought  into  action.  This  has  been  only  too  abun 
dantly  demonstrated  in  the  enormous  difficulties  which 
eugenists  of  the  United  States  have  encountered  whenever 
they  have  endeavored  to  abolish  our  medieval  laws  for 
bidding  the  dissemination  of  scientific  information  about 
birth-control  through  the  mails.  With  the  almost  des 
potic  power  of  the  Japanese  Government  and  its  free  re 
liance  upon  the  army  of  scientists  in  its  employ,  most 
obstacles  of  that  sort  might  be  swept  away  in  a  surpris 
ingly  short  time. 

In  continental  Asia,  Mexico  and  South  America  there 
is  still  room  for  surplus  Japanese  now  alive.  Thither 
they  might  go,  and  before  many  new  generations  of 
unwanted  babies  grow  up,  the  Government  might  have 
this  whole  vexed  problem  well  in  hand.  Such  a  move 
would  be  at  once  a  triumph  of  scientific  statesmanship 
and  a  blessing  to  all  mankind. 

As  for  ourselves,  first  of  all  we  must  recognize  the 
impossibility  of  Japan's  reducing  her  birth-rate  rapidly. 
That  is  contrary  to  everything  we  know  about  human 
nature.  We  face  the  fact  then  that,  in  the  next  thirty 
or  forty  years,  we  must  do  our  part  in  making  it  easy  for 
at  least  20,000,000  Japanese  to  find  homes  abroad.  The 
rational  attitude  is  to  put  no  obstacle  in  their  way  save 
such  as  may  be  necessary  for  the  protecting  of  our  own 
children.  This  implies  that  we  should  look  favorably 
upon  extensive  migrations  of  Japanese  into  Siberia, 
Mexico,  and  South  America.  In  none  of  these  lands  will 
they  come  into  conflict  with  either  a  dense  population  or 
a  highly  organized  and  virile  civilization.  With  their 
unusual  energy  and  ability,  they  cannot  fail  to  improve 


366  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

all  of  these  vast  waste  places  and  better  their  own  lot  as 
well.  Morally,  physically,  and  intellectually,  the  Japa 
nese  are  superior  to  nine-tenths  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Latin  America;  and  it  is  certain  that  they  would  do 
more  in  the  way  of  uplifting  the  countries  between  the 
Eio  Grande  and  Chile  than  any  of  the  natives  of  those 
backward  places  will  ever  be  able  to  do. 

Our  own  population  problem  must  next  be  considered. 
It  differs  from  Japan's  in  both  of  its  fundamental  as 
pects.  Japan  is  a  genuine  nation.  We  are  not.  Japan 
has  a  homogeneous  people  speaking  one  language  (save 
for  a  few  minor  dialects)  and  having  one  set  of  folkways. 
We  have  a  hundred  jumbled  races,  speeches,  folkways, 
and  ideals,  all  jarring  and  as  yet  but  little  reconciled. 
We  are,  to  be  plain,  the  super-Balkans.  In  the  second 
place,  Japan 's  population  has  already  outgrown  its  domes 
tic  food  supply  and  will  soon  reach  the  point  of  an  ethnic 
explosion.  We,  on  the  other  hand,  are  far  from  famine. 
True,  the  law  of  diminishing  returns  is  sending  food 
prices  up  and  warning  us  that  a  day  of  reckoning  must 
come.  None  the  less,  as  Raymond  Pearl's  computations 
show,  we  still  have  more  than  a  century  of  normal,  natu 
ral  growth  ahead  of  us  before  we  shall  have  reached  the 
dead  line.  We  have  room  for  about  92,000,000  more  peo 
ple  in  our  present  domain.  Thus  our  population  problem 
becomes  twofold :  first,  how  shall  we  handle  population 
in  the  future  so  as  to  Americanize  the  United  States? — 
and  secondly,  who  shall  the  last  92,000,000  extra  Ameri 
cans  be,  our  own  children  or  those  of  a  hundred  alien 
strains  ? 

You  must  see  at  once  that  these  two  problems  inter- 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      367 

lock  at  every  point.  And  probably  both  must  be  han 
dled  together.  They  will  eventually  involve  three  dis 
tinct  procedures: 

1.  Forcing  up  the  standard  of  living  of  the  lower  eco 
nomic  classes; 

2.  Putting  a  stop  to  immigration,  or  greatly  reducing 
it;  and 

3.  Scientific  birth  control. 

The  first  method  is  being  followed  by  our  more  progres 
sive  labor  unions  and  by  many  social  welfare  organiza 
tions.  Every  move  in  the  direction  of  cleaner  streets, 
better  school  teachers,  stricter  medical  inspection  of 
school  children  and  factory  workers,  good  roads,  and  so 
on  carries  us  further  toward  a  better  living  standard, 
which,  as  I  have  said,  is  the  one  solid  reality  of  Ameri 
canism.  It  would  be  well  if  such  Americanism  might  be 
formally  recognized  as  the  basis  on  which  all  law  and 
social  order  ought  to  be  erected. 

The  checking  of  immigration  has  been  agitated  strongly 
of  late ;  but,  as  this  volume  goes  to  press,  there  are  indi 
cations  that  the  next  Congress  may  fail  to  handle  this 
large  and  difficult  matter  courageously  and  with  intelli 
gence,  so  great  is  the  pressure  for  the  Open  Door,  both 
from  the  large  employers  of  low-grade  labor  and  from 
the  relatives  of  suffering  Europeans  who  wish  to  bring 
the  latter  over  here.  A  scientific  statesman  would  listen 
to  both  these  groups  dispassionately  and  then  point  out 
to  them  certain  fundamental  facts  which  must  be  faced 
if  we  are  to  avoid  disaster.  These  may  be  reduced  to 
the  form  of  a  dilemma. 


368  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

THE  GREAT   DILEMMA   OF  IMMIGRATION 

No  advocate  of  free  immigration  and  no  disciple  of 
Americanism  seems  to  have  sensed  the  deeper  dilemma 
involved  in  these  two  programs.  It  is  as  follows : 

1.  If  we  admit  large  numbers  of  aliens  to  the  United 
States,  these  immigrants  will  settle  almost  entirely  in  the 
cities.  All  the  employment  agencies  serving  our  mines, 
mills,  factories,  and  stores  will  bend  their  energies  to 
keep  such  newcomers  in  cities;  and  all  the  deepest  psy 
chological  forces  in  each  immigrant  will  tend  to  keep  him 
in  the  foreign  quarter  of  some  town,  where  he  can  meet 
men  from  "Back  Home,"  read  papers  in  his  native  lan 
guage,  and  eat  food  to  which  his  palate  is  adjusted. 
Now,  if  these  influences  predominate — as  they  must  un 
less  checked  by  some  comprehensive  and  energetic  legis 
lation  and  private  social  reform — the  result  is  bound  to 
react  injuriously  upon 

a — American  labor  unions  and 

b — The  entire  American  standard  of  living  which  has 
been  most  aggressively  maintained  by  those  labor  unions. 

The  immigrant,  as  has  been  abundantly  proved  by  our 
past  experience  with  him,  will  work  for  less  than  the 
native  American.  A  stranger  in  a  strange  land,  he  is 
often  ignorant  of  his  rights  and  his  opportunities;  and 
the  fact  that  he  instinctively  tends  to  live  with  his  own 
kind  curtails  his  chances  gravely.  Social  segregation 
nearly  always  means  economic  servitude,  at  least  for  some 
years.  He  always  has  been  the  stubbornest  competitor 
of  the  American  laborer  just  because  he  is  strategically 
at  a  disadvantage  in  bargaining  with  prospective  em 
ployers. 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      369 

It  is  this  fact  which  makes  the  large  employer  of  un 
skilled  and  semi-skilled  labor  the  most  ardent  advocate 
of  a  wide-open  immigration  policy  to-day.  For  five 
years  he  has  been  groaning  under  a  steadily  mounting 
wage  scale  and  a  steadily  declining  quality  of  work  done. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  American  workers  are  largely 
to  blame  for  the  intense  reaction  against  unionism  which 
is  now  apparent  all  over  our  country ;  they  have,  beyond 
all  doubt,  been  "soldiering"  scandalously  and  in  all  too 
many  instances  have  shown  themselves  to  be  as  shameless 
profiteers  as  their  esteemed  contemporaries  who  fattened 
off  the  Shipping  Board.  Be  this  as  it  may,  though,  the 
simple  fact  is  that,  if  the  employers  succeed  in  forcing 
through  a  "liberal"  immigration  bill  in  the  winter  of 
1920,  industrial  wages  will  promptly  decline  and  unem 
ployment  among  native  workers  will  increase;  at  the 
same  time,  as  the  inevitable  result  of  a  huge  influx  into 
our  cities,  food  prices  and  rents  will  either  mount  or  at 
least  hold  their  old  high  levels,  for  it  is  well  known  that 
city  laborers  out  of  work  do  not  straightway  rush  back 
to  the  farms  and  grow  foodstuffs,  nor  do  real  estate 
operators  instantly  build  new  tenements  for  each  fresh 
shipload  of  Greeks  landing  at  Ellis  Island.  Thus  the 
whole  present  abnormal  unbalance  between  industrial 
ism  and  agriculture  will  be  aggravated ;  and  so  too  will 
be  the  parallel  unbalance  of  town  and  country.  And  it 
will  become  more  difficult  to  maintain,  and  quite  impos 
sible  to  extend,  the  American  standard  of  living.  But 
this  standard  of  living  is  the  very  backbone  of  Ameri 
canism,  as  we  have  elsewhere  shown.  Remove  this  stand 
ard  of  living,  and  all  the  rest  of  what  we  call  American 
ism  vanishes  in  thin  air.  It  has  no  solid  foundation  and 


370  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

no  nourishment.  Subtract  "the  full  dinner  pail"  and 
the  wife's  Sunday-go-to-meeting-  dress,  and  the  motion 
picture  show  around  the  corner ;  and  you  have  left  only 
the  Fourth  of  July,  My  Country,  'T  is  of  Thee,  a  few  War 
Savings  Stamps,  and  the  Constitution,  for  which  no 
truckman  or  carpenter  cares  a  hang  and  which  we  are 
all  busily  nullifying — from  the  Supreme  Court  down 
to  the  youngest  moonshiner. 

2.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  a  determined  effort  is  made 
to  prevent  this  dangerous  congestion  of  aliens  in  our  in 
dustrial  centers;  and  if  this  is  coupled  with  sincere 
endeavors  to  maintain  wages  at  a  level  which  will  per 
mit  American  workingmen  to  go  on  living  in  their 
accustomed  manner,  the  new  immigrants  will  be  sent  to 
our  rural  districts  and  thereby  be  aided  in  leasing  or 
buying  farms  and  in  getting  employment  as  farm  hands. 
Such  a  program  carried  out  on  a  scale  grandiose  enough 
to  prevent  wholesale  concentration  of  aliens  in  the  cities 
would  place  millions  of  foreigners  annually  on  our 
farms.  This  horde  would  have  to  be  settled  in  racial 
groups,  for  inescapable  psychological  reasons.  No 
Italian  will  go  to  a  back  county  of  Illinois  where  the 
farmers  all  speak  English  only  and  where  the  corner 
grocer  carries  neither  garlic  nor  spaghetti.  No  Slav 
will  tarry  long  in  the  hills  of  North  Carolina,  surrounded 
by  a  mountain  folk  who  have  nothing  to  do  with  him 
and  his  family,  not  because  they  dislike  him  but  merely 
because  they  cannot  talk  with  him  and  have  no  common 
interests  with  him.  All  recent  surveys  of  our  foreign 
population  disclose  the  same  two  facts  about  it:  the 
alien  who  goes  to  the  country  alone,  endures  a  year  or 
two  of  solitude  and  homesickness  and  then  wanders  back 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      371 

to  the  town  where  men  of  his  own  kind  dwell;  and  the 
alien  who  goes  to  the  country  and  sticks  there  always 
goes  along  with  a  group  of  his  own  people  and  there 
creates  a  foreign  colony  precisely  like  the  greater  one 
from  which  they  all  came  in  New  York,  Chicago,  or  San 
Francisco.  The  present  writer  has  observed  such  un- 
American  communities  all  over — pure  Russian  villages 
in  Central  Florida,  pure  Italian  settlements  in  New 
Jersey,  Utah,  and  California;  pure  Polish  farm  towns 
in  Michigan,  pure  Galician  Jewish  patches  in  the  rich 
tobacco  belt  of  the  Connecticut  Valley,  and  pure  Japa 
nese  worlds  all  over  the  Pacific  Coast.  And  he  is  con 
vinced  that  those  critics  are  correct  who  declare  that 
these  thousands  of  alien  spots  are  so  many  sources  of 
confusion  and  cross-purposes  in  American  social  and 
political  life.  They  are  one  of  the  two  or  three  factors 
which  have  thus  far  prevented  the  United  States  from 
becoming  a  nation  in  the  strict  sense  in  which  Great 
Britain,  France,  Germany,  and  Japan  are  nations.  They 
have  been  largely  responsible  for  our  inability  to  work 
out  a  clean-cut  national  policy.  Our  105,000,000  people 
are  still — all  oratory  and  buncombe  aside — a  collection  of 
widely  differing  racial  and  national  groups;  and  the 
solidarity,  as  well  as  the  segregation,  of  these  groups 
is  becoming  more  and  more  pronounced  since  the  war. 
The  hope  of  the  patriots  that  the  war  would  unify 
America  was  a  vain  one.  The  outcome  is  the  precise 
opposite.  And  all  those  patriotic  organizations  which 
were  most  zealous  in  unifying  public  sentiment  and  loy 
alty  have  been  the  first  to  perceive  and  to  admit  their 
failure. 

It  would  be   a  waste  of  the  reader's  time  here  to 


372  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

enumerate  the  extensive  evidences  of  this  fact.  Every 
morning's  newspaper  is  crammed  with  them.  The 
fierce  group  loyalty  of  the  Irish  in  America  has  already 
made  the  political  issues  of  Ireland  a  menacing  factor 
in  American  politics,  just  as  the  tremendous  group 
loyalty  of  German  Americans  was  a  mighty  force  in 
shaping  our  war  policy  for  three  years.  The  Russian 
Jews  are  one  of  the  chief  obstacles  in  the  way  of  a  sound 
restrictive  immigration  policy.  The  Jews  and  Italians 
of  New  York  City  have  largely  displaced  the  old  Irish 
as  a  power  in  municipal  politics  and  are  refining  upon 
the  crude  scoundrel! sm  of  ancient  Tammany,  quite  after 
the  fashion  of  Italian  politics,  which  are  probably  the 
most  contemptible  on  earth,  and  with  the  commercial 
cunning  of  the  old  Ghetto  than  which  there  is  none 
shrewder  in  keeping  within  the  law  and  still  "  getting 
away  with  the  goods. ' ' 

One  does  not  have  to  go  so  far  as  Henry  Ford,  in 
his  ignorant  and  silly  attacks  upon  the  Jewish  race,  nor 
so  far  as  Hearst  in  his  vicious  assaults  upon  the  Japa 
nese,  nor  so  far  as  various  Southern  politicians  who  have 
lately  vented  their  hatred  upon  Italians  and  all  other 
ardent  Catholics  from  Europe:  one  may  shun  such  ex 
cesses,  I  say,  and  still  see  in  all  such  survivals  of  alien 
race  groups,  customs,  and  language  so  many  sources  of 
domestic  antagonisms  and  misunderstandings,  all  of 
which  make  impossible  a  truly  national  program  touching 
world  affairs.  It  was  just  these  racial  forces  in  our 
population  which,  more  than  anything  else,  kept  us  out 
of  the  League  of  Nations.  And,  even  when  the  League 
has  purged  itself  of  some  obvious  defects  on  whose  pres 
ence  those  racial  forces  relied  to  camouflage  their  real 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      373 

reasons  for  protest,  we  shall  find  ourselves  in  endless 
turmoil,  whether  we  join  the  League  or  stay  out.  It  is 
not  at  all  a  grotesque  fear  that  moves  some  Americans 
— notably  ex-Senator  Beveridge — to  say  that  we  may 
expect  those  alien  forces  to  break  down  our  national 
unity  in  time.  It  would  be  grotesque,  of  course,  to  im 
agine  that  they  would  do  this  as  a  part  of  some  anti- 
American  conspiracy ;  and  still  more  grotesque  to  fancy 
that  they  might  be  dissuaded  from  working  for  the 
interests  of  their  fatherlands  here  by  being  lectured  to, 
in  school  or  out,  on  Americanism  and  the  great  need  of 
their  acquiring  it.  The  efforts  to  "Americanize"  them 
by  bellowing  the  Declaration  of  Independence  at  them, 
forcing  them  to  learn  and  use  English,  and  making  them 
stand  up  in  the  motion  picture  theater  when  the  Star 
Spangled  Banner  is  played  all  do  more  harm  than  good. 
These  people  have  cultures  of  their  own,  and  these  cul 
tures  have  become  fixed  life  habits  in  all  of  them  save 
the  children.  These  life  habits  cannot  be  broken  down, 
except  by  some  catastrophe  of  the  first  magnitude.  You 
might  as  well  expect  a  New  England  Yankee  who  had 
gone  to  live  in  Japan  as  agent  of  some  Boston  manufac 
turers  to  become  a  mikado  worshiper  and  a  Japanese 
jingo,  as  to  hope  to  change  an  adult  European  into  a  New 
England  Yankee. 

Now,  it  is  bad  enough  to  turn  the  United  States  into 
super-Balkans  by  dotting  the  countryside  with  villages 
that  speak  a  hundred  tongues  and  follow  a  hundred 
folkways.  But  there  is  a  consequence  that  is  infinitely 
worse  than  that.  It  is  the  one  which  Mr.  Thompson 
and  Mr.  Mead  have  pointed  out  and  which  I  have  per 
sonally  verified  by  observation  in  several  States,  East, 


374  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

South,  and  West.  The  presence  of  such  low-standard 
settlements  in  an  American  rural  district  regularly 
tends  to  drive  the  less  prosperous  small  farmers  out, 
under  the  stress  of  competition.  Especially  the  young 
men  and  young  women  become  dissatisfied  to  remain 
in  a  neighborhood  where  "queer"  newcomers  speaking 
strange  tongues  and  doing  odd  things  reside.  All  the 
tremendous  instincts  which  are  blended  in  that  complex 
which  Franklin  Giddings  calls  "the  consciousness  of 
kind"  impel  the  rising  generation  to  get  out.  The  re 
sults  are  such  as  Mr.  Thompson  has  observed  in  New 
York  State  and  I  have  seen  in  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania, 
and  the  Japanese  regions  of  California.  The  Americans 
pack  up  and  go  to  the  cities  or — less  often  to  other  farm 
ing  regions.  And  the  countryside  becomes  wholly  alien. 

What  the  end  of  such  a  movement  must  be,  is  only 
too  clear.  The  solid  earth  of  America  will  become  the 
possession  of  negroes,  Japanes,  Slovaks,  Italians,  and 
Russians,  all  broken  up  into  self-preserving  communi 
ties  exactly  as  in  the  Balkans,  or  more  so.  The  old 
Americans  will  become  unattached  mill-hands,  clerks, 
drummers,  and  wanderers  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  which 
is  theirs  no  more. 

Is  this  a  grim  fantasy?  Let  him  who  thinks  so  study 
the  history  of  Central  and  Eastern  Europe.  There  it 
has  been  enacted  over  and  over  again  on  more  than  one 
stage.  And  there  is  nothing  visible  in  the  American 
situation  to  change  the  program. 

Let  us  sum  up  then:  adult  immigrants  cannot  be 
made  into  Americans  and  they  are,  through  no  fault  of 
their  own  and  through  no  conspiracy,  a  peculiar  menace 
to  the  development  of  a  coherent  American  life.  If 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      375 

they  stay  in  the  cities,  they  menace  American  life  by 
lowering  our  standard  of  living  through  cheap  compe 
tition.  If  they  go  to  the  rural  districts,  they  menace 
American  life  through  acute  segregation  and  the  per 
petuation  of  their  alien  tongues  and  institutions  and 
interests.  So  long  as  the  United  States  managed  to  hold 
aloof  from  international  affairs,  these  alien  groups  did 
not  interfere  with  our  larger  politics ;  they  only  inter 
fered  with  our  standard  of  living.  But  to-day  all  this 
has  changed.  If,  then,  we  feel  that  national  unity  is 
of  supreme  importance,  as  a  result  of  the  new  inter 
national  situation,  then  we  must  check  immigration  for 
some  years  to  come.  We  must  do  the  same  if  we  feel 
that  the  further  abnormal  growth  of  our  cities  is  a 
social  and  political  menace.  We  must  do  the  same  if  we 
wish  to  Americanize  the  farm  by  making  the  country 
attractive  economically  and  socially  to  Americans. 

The  intelligent  Japanese,  learning  these  facts,  will 
look  upon  the  anti-Japanese  sentiment  in  California 
as  a  very  insignificant  ripple  on  a  tidal  wave  of  na 
tional  reaction  against  all  alien  groups.  He  will  find 
less  race  feeling  directed  specifically  against  the  Japa 
nese  than  there  is  in  New  York  City  against  the  Russian 
Jew,  or  in  the  San  Joaquin  Valley  against  the  Armenian. 
He  will  come  to  realize  that  almost  every  part  of  the 
United  States  has  its  race  problem  and  its  polygot  prob 
lem  and  its  agrarian  problem;  and  that,  sooner  or  later, 
our  country  will  have  to  solve  the  whole  lot  of  them 
in  a  large  way  and  more  or  less  consistently.  In  that 
solution  he  may  be  pretty  sure  to  find  that  his  fellow 
countrymen  will  be  excluded  from  the  United  States, 
or  a.t  the  very  least  so  restricted  in  their  opportunities  of 


376  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

entrance  and  of  business  here  that  most  of  them  will 
seek  other  fields. 

What  he  has  the  right  to  expect  is  that  our  treatment 
of  the  Japanese  shall  not  be  discriminatory.  He  will 
be  amply  justified  in  complaining,  were  we  to  go  on  ad 
mitting  streams  of  Kuthenians,  Slovaks,  Chechs,  and 
Italians,  while  barring  his  kind.  Such  a  procedure 
would  be  inconsistent  not  only  with  our  alleged  ideal  of 
fair  play  but  even  more  so  with  sound  national  policy. 
Universal  exclusion  in  the  interests  of  Americanizing 
America  can  offend  nobody.  Selective  exclusion  will 
cause  widespread  irritation,  as  well  as  either  or  both  of 
the  social  ills  we  have  been  describing. 

THE  FOOD   AND   FARM   PROBLEM 

Japan's  food  and  farm  problem  is  much  simpler  than 
our  own,  though  much  more  urgent.  She  must  send 
millions  of  peasants  in  short  order  to  rich  farming 
regions,  firstly  to  relieve  pressure  of  population  at  home 
and,  secondly,  to  create  her  own  adequate  food  resources 
overseas,  as  England  and  France  have  done.  Our  task 
is  much  harder,  but  we  may  in  time  solve  it.  We  must 
make  farming  sufficiently  profitable  as  an  investment 
and  sufficiently  attractive  as  a  way  of  life  to  keep  young 
men  of  the  older  American  stocks  in  the  country.  We 
must  make  the  country  agreeable  to  American  women 
whose  living  standards  are  high.  We  must  make  it  a 
place  where  American  children  can  grow  up  well  edu 
cated  and  well  trained.  Almost  every  tendency  at 
present  is  away  from  these  ideals,  in  spite  of  the  sud 
den  prosperity  of  thousands  of  farmers.  The  city 
ward  drift  grows.  The  shift  of  aliens  to  the  aban- 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      377 

doned  farm  increases.  The  negro  buys  more  and  more 
fields  every  day.  And  tens  of  thousands  of  old  home 
steads  all  over  East  and  Middle  West  may  be  bought 
for  half  value  or  even  less.  No  sane  American  to-day 
would  buy  a  farm  to  live  on  it  and  work  it  as  a  busi 
ness. 

What  can  we  do  about  it?  There  is  only  one  sure 
answer.  The  States  must  take  hold  of  the  situation 
and  follow  the  lead  of  the  California  Land  Settlement 
Board.  They  must  begin  the  building  of  rural  towns 
complete,  as  Elwood  Mead  is  now  building  them  in  the 
San  Joaquin  Valley.  They  must  bring  to  the  country 
all  the  solid  advantages  of  town  life,  which  are,  as  al 
ready  shown,  the  lure  that  draws  men  from  the  farms. 
Nothing  can  be  plainer  than  the  impossibility  of  any 
individual  farmer's  citifying  the  country.  He  can 
not  bring  in  neighbors  of  his  own  sort.  He  cannot  pause 
in  the  midst  of  his  own  heavy  toil  and  organize  com 
munity  centers,  cooperatives,  good  roads  societies,  and 
the  hundred  other  things  that  enter  into  civilization. 
Nor  can  this  complex  undertaking  be  handled  by  private 
corporations,  for  the  excellent  reason  that  the  profits 
are  too  low  to  attract  capital  in  quantity.  Moreover, 
the  moral  responsibility  for  the  agrarian  crisis  and  the 
moral  obligation  to  solve  it  rests  squarely  upon  the 
Federal  Government  and  the  people  of  the  United  States. 
For  it  is  these  who  have,  with  open  eyes,  brought  things 
rural  to  their  present  state  of  demoralization. 

From  the  beginning,  when  we  began  giving  away  home 
steads,  down  to  the  latest  legislation,  Congress  has  al 
lowed  itself  to  be  dominated  in  its  major  policies  by 
the  interests  of  the  large  cities,  which  have  been  well 


378  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

organized,  well  financed,  and  in  the  clear  as  to  what  they 
want.  The  railroads  and  the  industries  and  the  banks 
have  managed  to  sway  legislation,  not  in  a  corrupt  man 
ner  so  much  as  shortsightedly.  The  abnormal  econom 
ics  of  a  huge  undeveloped  continent  has  persistently 
blinded  city  business  men  to  the  elemental  fact  that 
all  society  rests  on  food  supply,  all  food  supply  comes 
from  farms,  all  farms  must  be  operated  by  human  be 
ings,  and  all  human  beings  save  fools  want  to  live  as 
well  as  other  folks — and,  if  they  don't  or  can't  on  the 
farms,  the  smarter  ones  get  out,  leaving  the  dullards 
behind  and  thus  undermining  the  whole  pyramid  of 
civilization.  A  scientific  statesman  would  have  fore 
seen  this  situation  and  planned  a  policy  in  which  the 
basic  interests  of  both  town  and  country  were  equally 
active.  He  would  not  have  squandered  millions  in  the 
silly  reclamation  and  irrigation  schemes  that  are  a 
joke  in  so  many  parts  of  the  West.  He  would  not  have 
sent  free  seeds  to  farmers.  And  he  would  not  have 
relegated  the  Department  of  Agriculture  to  its  present 
degraded  position  of  a  mere  scientific  and  census  bureau 
in  which  many  men  of  extraordinary  ability  are  kept 
at  work  studying  plant  diseases  and  soil  analysis  and 
are  not  allowed,  under  the  etiquette  of  bureaucracy, 
either  to  propose  or  to  carry  out  any  general  agrarian 
policy  that  restores  the  balance  of  civilization.  To 
day,  reviewing  the  errors  of  the  past,  our  scientific  states 
man  perceives  that  the  evils  wrought  by  Federal  mis 
management  are  so  far-reaching  that  only  Federal  man 
agement  can  correct  them  promptly  enough  to  forestall 
disaster.  Just  what  can  be  done  toward  reform  will  be 
suggested  in  a  moment. 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      379 

THE   STANDARD   OP   LIVING  PROBLEM 

Japan's  rising  standard  of  living  is  much  more  seri 
ous  than  our  own,  as  a  consequence  of  her  dense  popula 
tion  and  the  extreme  slowness  with  which  customs  affect 
ing  the  birth-rate  change.  It  seems  entirely  within  the 
bounds  of  possibility  that  the  country  may  literally  blow 
up  within  a  decade  or  two  in  a  tremendous  social 
revolution,  unless  despotic  measures  are  resorted  to, 
either  for  the  checking  of  the  desire  for  better  things  or 
else  for  the  emigration  of  millions.  Now,  it  is  incon 
ceivable  that  the  Japanese  Government  would  seriously 
consider  any  attempt  to  hold  down  the  living  standard; 
in  the  first  place,  the  average  standard,  as  I  have  shown, 
is  perilously  low  now ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  the 
whole  new  industrial  development  of  the  country  brings 
men  and  women  into  the  towns  and  factories,  where 
the  social  environment  inevitably  forces  up  the  living 
standard.  To  interfere  with  industrialism  and  to  force 
the  people  back  to  peasantry  is  wildly  impossible. 
There  remains  then  only  one  course — quick  and  vast 
emigration. 

As  for  the  United  States,  our  rising  standard  of  liv 
ing  is,  at  bottom,  the  predominant  cause  of  the  drift 
to  the  cities;  of  the  silly  extravagance  of  the  semi 
skilled  and  unskilled  working  classes,  whose  mania  for 
silk  stockings  and  player  pianos  has  been  gratified  of 
late  and  will  be  checked  only  with  the  greatest  difficulty ; 
and  finally  of  the  discontent  and  moral  collapse  that  are 
all  but  universal  to-day.  Now,  it  is  very  easy  to  say 
that  the  remedy  for  these  three  interlocking  evils  is  a 
return  to  the  good  old  simplicity  and  puritanism  of 


380  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

former  days.  This  is  now  being  energetically  recom 
mended  by  many  clergymen  and  other  professional 
moralists  and  reformers.  But  it  is  based  on  crass  ig 
norance  of  human  nature  and  can  never  succeed.  It 
also  betrays  unfamiliarity  with  the  whole  technique  of 
progress,  and  hence  ought  not  succeed. 

If  there  is  any  clearly  proved  fact  about  economic  and 
social  progress,  it  is  that  such  progress  is  closely  corre 
lated  with  a  rising  standard  of  living.  Not  with  such 
a  standard  measured  merely  in  terms  of  gross  quantity 
of  consumption,  to  be  sure;  but  rather  with  a  standard 
whose  whole  pattern  and  structure  are  nicely  calculated 
and  scientifically  tested.  The  fool  who  earns  six  dollars 
a  day  and  spends  half  of  it  on  fancy  clothes  is  not 
contributing  to  progress.  He  is  hampering  it3  of  course. 
But  he  would  be  contributing  to  it  were  he  to  spend 
half  of  his  wages  on  the  most  nutritious  and  well  pre 
pared  foods,  decent  clothes,  well  aired  and  lighted  lodg 
ings,  medical  inspection,  and  so  on,  and  divide  the 
other  half  between  wholesome  diversions  and  the  sav 
ings  bank. 

Taking  the  country  at  large,  the  normal  tendency 
is  to  spend  chiefly  for  true  utilities;  and  the  whole 
trend  of  welfare  and  labor  legislation  is  in  the  direction 
of  establishing  rational  patterns  of  life.  And  the  re 
sult  is  that  American  workers  actually  accomplish  in 
eight  hours  of  daily  labor  nearly  twice  as  much  as  their 
British  cousins  do  in  ten  hours,  while  their  physique  and 
health  are  incomparably  superior  to  the  poorly  fed  and 
abominably  housed  urban  worker  of  England,  as  many 
Englishmen  have  testified.  This  high  efficiency  has  been 
raised  notably  of  late  by  the  American  prohibition  law, 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      381 

which  has  worried  British  manufacturers  much  more 
than  our  navy  and  our  tariff  have.  They  see  our  work 
ers  achieving  through  sobriety  a  level  of  output  and 
quality  that  none  of  the  drunkard  races  of  Europe  can 
hope  to  rival;  and  they  fear  that  they  will  lose  out  in 
world  trade  because  the  moral  level  of  Europe  is  still 
much  too  low  to  make  possible  such  scientific  restraints 
and  hygienic  improvements  of  entire  peoples. 

This,  together  with  many  other  matters  too  numerous 
to  dwell  upon  here,  convinces  me  that,  just  as  "the  only 
cure  for  civilization  is  more  civilization,"  so  the  only 
remedy  for  the  evils  of  a  rising  standard  of  living  is 
a  still  higher  standard.  The  remedy  is  not  any  standard 
that  costs  more  per  year.  But  some  accurately  com 
puted  and  tested  standard.  Furthermore,  this  standard 
must  be  wisely  distributed,  so  that  the  difference  be 
tween  town  and  country  life  is  reduced  to  a  minimum. 
In  this  manner,  America  will  become  self -sufficient  and 
socially  sound  in  her  agrarian  foundations,  and  at  the 
same  time  the  dominant  power  in  world  trade  through 
sheer  individual  efficiency,  which  comes  through  a  skil 
ful  blending  of  health,  comfort,  leisure,  and  education. 


A  PROPOSED  PROGRAM 

The  Japanese  crisis  can,  I  think,  be  permanently  solved 
if  we  attack  the  underlying  causes  of  it  in  the  follow 
ing  manner: 

1.  Dispel  the  belief,  now  current  in  Asia  and  a  good 
part  of  Europe  and  South  America,  that  we  are  secretly 
and  hypocritically  committed  to  economic  imperialism. 
To  this  end,  grant  immediate  independence  to  the  Philip-_ 


382  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

pines  on  condition  that  the  new  island  nation  join  the 
League  of  Nations  at  once. 

This  move  will  protect  the  Philippines  against  a  possi 
ble  invasion  by  the  Japanese  militarists,  if  the  League 
of  Nations  amounts  to  anything.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  League  should  prove  unwilling  or  incompetent  to 
protect  one  of  its  smaller  members  against  aggression 
from  a  powerful  one,  the  United  States  would  then  have 
adequate  evidence  as  to  the  futility  of  the  League  and 
could  keep  out  of  it.  Quite  apart  from  our  moral 
obligation  to  keep  our  promise  to  the  Filipinos,  such  a 
move  would  serve  two  important  purposes. 

2.  Further  to  dispel  the  evil  reputation  we  have  as 
militarists,  let  us  enter  into  a  drastic  disarmament  agree 
ment  with  Japan  and  Great  Britain.  The  obstacles  in 
the  way  of  such  a  move  are  immense,  and  I  am  the  last  to 
belittle  them.  But,  at  a  pinch,  we  have  the  power  in 
our  hands  to  force  the  issue.  If  the  militarists  of  Eng 
land  and  Japan,  who  are  still  powerful,  block  a  dis 
armament,  we  can  say  to  them  quite  bluntly :  * '  Gentle 
men,  we  give  you  your  own  choice  between  two  courses. 
Either  disarm  with  us  at- once,  or  else  continue  with  your 
programs,  and  we  shall  proceed  to  build  two  ships  for 
every  one  that  you  construct.  If  it  is  to  be  militarism, 
then  let  it  be  to  a  finish.  But  we  warn  you  that,  in 
such  a  race,  you  will  be  the  first  to  go  down  in  revolution. 
Your  peoples  cannot  pay  the  bills.  Ours  can,  though 
they  do  not  wish  to.  When  you  are  overwhelmed,  we 
shall  then  be  the  one  unshattered  power  in  the  whole 
world.  And,  as  you  will  have  proved  by  your  policy 
your  own  incapacity  to  manage  civilization,  we  shall  be 
disinclined  to  consult  you  when  we  take  over  the  polic- 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      383 

ing  of  the  world.  "We  have  neither  the  ability  nor  the 
desire  to  conquer  the  world,  but  we  are  willing  to  go 
as  far  as  we  can  in  supporting  civilization  and  orderly 
development  with  ship  and  gun,  if  you  force  us  to  it. ? ' 

If  we  drop  the  silly  amenities  of  professional  diplom 
acy  and  speak  our  minds  bluntly,  we  shall  say  all  this. 
And  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  it  will  carry  the  day. 
Let  us  assume  for  the  moment  that  it  does.  What  then  ? 

3.  Thoroughgoing  disarmament  would  save  our  coun 
try  something  like  a  billion  a  year,  allowing  for  a  quarter- 
billion  or  more  of  continued  military  and  naval  expendi 
ture  for  a  restricted  coast  defense  program  and  train 
ing  program.     It  would  save  Japan   fully   a  quarter- 
billion.     The  British  economies  must  be  left  out  of  our 
calculations  here,  as  they  could  not  figure  in  the  read 
justment   of  American-Japanese   relations. 

Now,  what  might  be  done  with  this  sum?  Let  me 
give  you  the  roughest  sketch  of  its  possibilities,  a  sketch 
from  which  I  deliberately  omit  a  good  many  minor 
complications  of  financing,  each  of  which  would  doubt 
less  modify  the  program  I  suggest,  but  would  not  vitiate 
its  underlying  policy. 

4.  Japan  must  force  up  her  rural  standard  of  living 
by  draining  off  her  excess  population.     Were   she  to 
set  aside  an  annual  revolving  fund  of  $100,000,000  to 
be  used  as  a  basis  for  extending  credits  to  colonization 
companies  which  took  Japanese  to  various  parts  of  Si 
beria,  Mexico  and  South  America  and  there  built  up 
rural  settlements  on  land  that  had  been  properly  in 
spected,  this  would  surely  finance   about  $250,000,000 
of  new  emigrant  enterprises  every  year ;  and  conceivably 
even  more. 


384,  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

The  history  of  successful  colonization  projects,  if 
viewed  in  the  light  of  the  very  low  Japanese  standard 
of  living  and  the  relatively  simple  requirements  of  the 
Japanese  emigrants,  indicates  that  an  allowance  of 
$1,000  per  colonist  would  be  very  liberal,  possibly  too 
much  so.  On  this  basis,  no  fewer  than  250,000  emi 
grants  could  be  taken  care  of  with  each  year's  appro 
priation.  In  five  years,  there  would  be  a  gross  revolv 
ing  fund  of  half  a  billion  dollars,  which  could  finance 
the  emigration  of  half  a  million  people  a  year.  Doubt 
less  Japan  would  not  wish  to  send  so  many  beyond 
her  boundaries;  so  part  of  this  immense  fund  would  be 
diverted  to  domestic  agrarian  colonies,  the  chief  aim  of 
which  ought  to  be  the  breakdown  of  the  evil  Asiatic 
system  of  intensive  farming,  which  makes  slaves  of  the 
workers,  and  the  consolidation  of  Japan's  millions  of 
tiny  back-yard  farms  (of  two  or  three  acres  each)  into 
regional  or  community  farms  which  can  be  worked  by 
modern  machinery.  The  faster  Japan  can  exterminate 
her  tiny  farms,  the  faster  will  she  approach  civilization. 

5.  At  the  same  time  Japan  must  force  up  her  urban 
standard  of  living.  To  do  this,  she  must  simultaneously 
raise  industrial  wages,  reduce  working  hours,  better 
the  external  conditions  of  labor,  and  provide  technical 
education  on  a  large  scale.  All  this  costs  money.  It 
means  that  production  costs  will  rise  and  that  hence 
Japan's  present  advantage  in  certain  world  markets 
will  melt  away.  How  prevent  industrial  disaster  then? 

Let  the  Japanese  set  aside  annually  another  hundred 
million  from  the  sum  she  shall  have  saved  through  dis 
armament.  Let  her  use  this  as  a  revolving  fund  pre 
cisely  as  American  manufacturers  and  exporters  are 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      385 

about  to  employ  one  of  the  very  same  amount  for  the 
financing  of  sales  to  the  stricken  European  countries. 
The  American  revolving  fund  of  a  hundred  million  will 
suffice  to  handle  about  ten  times  that  amount  of  sales. 
A  Japanese  fund  could  do  the  same.  And  just  as 
Europe  is  the  obvious  customer  of  America  in  such  a 
credit  transaction,  so  is  Russia  the  logical  buyer  in  the 
Japanese  markets,  at  least  for  as  much  as  Japan  is  able 
to  furnish. 

True,  at  present,  the  Russians  fear  and  hate  the  Japa 
nese  savagely  because  of  their  conduct  in  Siberia.  But, 
as  we  assume  disarmament,  it  would  follow  that  such 
hostility  would  disappear  at  least  to  the  point  of  making 
commercial  relations  possible.  Out  of  Russia  Japan  can 
draw  endless  raw  materials  for  her  industrial  develop 
ment,  and  into  Russia  she  can  pour  endless  manufactured 
goods.  What  is  most  important,  she  can  name  a  price 
which  will  enable  her  to  raise  her  urban  standard  of 
living,  and  at  the  same  time  make  good  profits. 

The  faintest  suggestion  that  Japan  resume  trade  with 
the  Russians  on  a  vast  scale  will,  of  course,  infuriate 
the  French  investors  in  the  old  czarist  government  bonds 
and  the  French  militarists  who  have  been  championing 
these  investors.  But  into  a  controversy  with  these  peo 
ple  we  cannot  now  be  dragged.  There  is  but  one  thing 
to  be  said :  no  matter  what  has  happened  in  the  past,  the 
brute  fact  of  to-day  is  that  the  moral  rights  of  Japan's 
seventy  million  toilers  to  find  food  and  comfort  are  in 
disputably  higher  and  more  insistent  than  the  rights 
of  any  bondholders  to  cash  their  coupons.  Whoever 
challenges  this  statement  confesses  himself  to  be  a  moral 
incompetent. 


386  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

6.  The  United  States  must  make  a  similar  division  of 
its  billion  saved  through  disarmament,  but  the  funds 
will  have  to  be  invested  quite  differently.  We  must 
aim  to  raise  our  rural  standard  of  living  to  the  point  at 
which  agriculture  again  becomes  both  profitable  and  at 
tractive  to  people  who  maintain  the  best  American 
standard  of  living;  and  at  the  same  time  we  must  keep 
the  urban  standard  up  and  work  slowly  toward  still 
higher  levels.  How  can  we  couple  these  aims? 

First  of  all,  we  must  put  an  abrupt  end  to  virtually 
all  immigration.  On  this  there  can  be  no  compromise. 
We  can  convince  both  Europe  and  Japan  that  such  a 
move  implies  no  race  prejudice  and  no  narrow  selfishness. 
We  can  make  them  see  that  we  have  more  social  prob 
lems  on  our  hands  than  we  can  solve,  with  the  best  of 
will,  in  another  fifty  years.  We  can  demonstrate  that 
every  newcomer  speaking  a  strange  tongue  and  bring 
ing  alien  folkways  simply  adds  to  our  difficulties  in 
Americanizing  the  United  States.  And  I  think  it  could 
even  be  demonstrated  that,  in  the  long  run,  the  best 
thing  that  can  happen  to  the  Old  World  is  to  force  it 
to  keep  its  young  and  energetic  natives  home,  to  aid  in 
reconstruction. 

With  the  immigrant  stream  turned  back  upon  itself, 
the  underbidding  of  American  labor  by  unorganized 
aliens  is  forever  done  away  with.  And  the  spreading 
of  self-centered  alien  communities  in  our  farming  dis 
tricts  will  rapidly  be  checked.  We  may  then  proceed 
undisturbed  with  the  positive  program  of  improving 
country  life.  This  program  must  follow  two  main  lines : 

a — Our  Federal  Farm  Loan  Board  should  receive 
fully  $200,000,000  a  year  extra  for  a  ten-year  period, 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      387 

for  the  granting  of  loans  to  established  farmers  of  good 
standing.  Not  counting  the  present  funds  of  the  Board, 
this  would  give  it  gross  two  billion  by  1930,  all  of  which 
would  be  invested  in  first  mortgages  on  the  best  farm 
soil  of  America.  These  mortgages  would  be  netting  the 
Treasury  Department  at  least  5% — a  very  decent  return. 
The  policy  of  the  Farm  Loan  Board,  in  making  loans, 
should  aim  much  more  directly  than  it  now  does  at 
improving  the  efficiency  of  farms  and  hence  their  earn 
ing  power.  This  involves  the  refusal  of  loans  to  men 
running  small  farms,  say  those  of  eighty  acres  or  less, 
except  where  the  specialized  character  of  the  crops 
clearly  indicates  a  normal  high  profit  per  acre,  as  com 
pared  with  the  returns  from  ordinary  farming.  It  also 
involves  the  granting  of  more  loans  for  the  purchase 
of  adjacent  good  acreage  by  farmers  who  have  proved 
that  they  can  make  money  at  the  business  and  want 
to  expand  up  to  a  thousand  acres  or  more.  At  pres 
ent  more  than  one-half  of  all  the  6,361,502  farms  enum 
erated  in  the  1910  census  are  too  small  to  support  an 
average  family  of  five  on  the  level  of  the  average  city 
worker.  This  is  the  chief  explanation  of  the  fact,  so 
mystifying  to  city  readers,  that,  in  spite  of  the  recent 
boom  in  farm  products,  the  average  income  of  the 
American  farmer  is  still  below  that  of  the  street  car 
conductor  and  the  clerk.  There  is  little  advantage  in 
getting  high  prices  for  crops  unless  one  grows  enough 
of  them  to  feed  and  clothe  self,  wife,  and  children. 
Wheat  might  go  to  six  dollars  a  bushel,  but  what  of 
the  farmer  who  grew  only  five  acres  of  it  and  nothing 
else  but  "garden  sass"? 

Now,  helping  the  successful  farmers  expand  would 


388  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tend  to  drive  out  the  undercapitalized  and  incompe 
tent  farmers,  whose  number  is  legion.  Thousands  of 
such  persons  are  now  struggling  to  make  ends  meet. 
They  ought  to  give  up  and  go  to  town  or  else  take 
employment  on  some  well  managed  large  farm.  The 
faster  they  can  be  bought  out  at  a  fair  price,  the  better 
for  all  of  us. 

b — Farm  loans  are  not  enough  to  raise  the  rural 
standard  of  living.  We  need  to  extend  all  over  the 
country  the  general  program  of  the  California  Land  Set 
tlement  Board,  modified  perhaps  to  suit  varying  condi 
tions  and  needs.  To  this  end  the  Federal  Government 
should  create  an  annual  appropriation  of  around  a 
quarter-billion  which  is  to  be  used  in  two  ways : 

i — for  the  reconstruction  of  existing  farm  villages 

into  model  rural  community  centers;  and 
ii — for  building  new  farm  villages  similar  to  the 
California  plan  at  Delhi. 

In  a  ten-year  period  this  fund  would  amount  to  two 
and  a  half  billion  dollars.  To  it  must  be  added  not  less 
than  a  quarter  billion  supplied  by  the  States,  counties, 
or  villages  in  which  the  Federal  fund  is  invested;  this 
by  way  of  preventing  the  whole  project  from  degenerat 
ing  into  a  rivers-and-harbors  scandal.  The  United 
States  must  hold  a  first  mortgage  on  the  entire  block  of 
improved  property  until  the  loans  have  been  paid  off  by 
the  beneficiaries. 

After  considering  the  costs  of  creating  the  village  of 
Delhi,  where  the  outlay  for  an  irrigation  system  is 
exceptionally  high,  I  believe  that,  taking  the  country 
at  large  and  assuming  that  existing  villages  could  be 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      389 

remodelled  for  about  one-half  the  cost  of  building  new 
towns,  I  estimate  that  $200,000  would  adequately  finance 
the  necessary  good  roads,  auditorium,  storage  warehouse 
or  grain  elevator,  and  other  construction  for  any  village 
on  a  railroad  and  in  a  good  farming  district  where  the 
natural  water  supply  and  drainage  are  satisfactory. 

In  other  words,  if  we  spent  only  one  sixth  of  our 
present  proposed  military  appropriation  on  this  rural 
reform,  we  could  in  ten  years  create  13,750  model  farm 
villages.  These  villages  would  be  the  center  of  social 
and  business  life  for  between  fifteen  and  twenty-five 
million  Americans. 

And  the  American  public  would  be  earning  five  per 
cent  on  their  total  investment. 

Were  the  Federal  Farm  Loan  Board  to  concentrate 
its  loans  in  the  neighborhood  of  these  same  13,750  com 
munities,  the  cumulative  effect  would  be  extraordinary. 
Properly  finance  the  able  farmers  within  the  four-mile 
zone  around  a  model  community,  and  you  have  an  ideal 
rural  life.  And  you  would  hear  no  more  outcries  against 
the  Japanese. 

7.  How  about  maintaining  and  further  exalting  the 
standard  of  living  in  our  cities?  "We  are  now  hearing 
ominous  prophecies  of  an  industrial  crisis.  Europe 
cannot  buy  from  our  factories  as  we  had  hoped  she 
would.  She  is  too  poor.  We  must  extend  heavy  credit 
to  her  manufacturers,  to  prevent  complete  dissolution 
and  anarchy  over  there.  But  with  our  loans  those 
manufacturers  will  turn  around  and  make  shiploads  of 
goods,  which  they  will  dump  on  the  American  markets 
and  undersell  our  own  producers.  Factory  after  fac 
tory  will  have  to  reduce  its  forces  or  even  close  down  in 


390  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

the  face  of  such  competition.  Hence  up  with  the  tariffs ! 
Higher  and  ever  higher ! 

This  is  the  reasoning  of  single-track  minds,  most  of 
which  are  monorails.  Putting  up  special  tariffs  defeats 
the  whole  program  of  reconstruction  in  Europe.  Eu 
rope  must  pay  us  with  goods  or  else  not  at  all.  Every 
student  of  international  affairs  agrees  on  that  point. 
It  would  therefore  appear  that  the  one  rational  proce 
dure  is  to  accept  those  goods  and  then  create  new  markets 
for  those  of  our  own  manufacturers  who  cannot  meet 
European  competition,  it  being  understood  that  no 
manufacturer  of  luxuries  is  entitled  to  the  slightest  con 
sideration  in  such  a  program. 

Now  where  could  there  be  a  vaster  and  a  surer  market 
than  the  richest,  most  energetic  fifteen  to  twenty-five 
million  American  farm  dwellers  who,  under  the  plan  just 
outlined,  would  have,  over  and  above  their  normal  ex 
penditures,  between  two  and  four  billion  dollars  extra  in 
ten  years,  all  of  which  must  be  spent  on  basic  commodi 
ties,  such  as  lumber,  cement,  iron  and  steel,  farm  im 
plements,  hardward,  automobiles,  tractors,  glass,  elec 
trical  equipment,  fertilizers,  and  a  thousand  other  items? 
On  the  most  conservative  calculation,  the  consumption 
power  of  this  group  would  greatly  exceed  in  money 
terms  the  total  exports  of  manufactured  goods  over  a 
normal  ten-year  period.  Mark  the  term,  manufactured 
goods.  It  is  in  the  interest  of  these  alone  that  some 
politicians  are  urging  a  high  tariff.  The  clamor  for 
a  tariff  on  farm  products  is  so  misguided  that  I  can 
not  consider  it  seriously  here. 

It  can  be  proved  in  detail  by  any  one  who  has  the 
time  to  check  through  the  items  that  the  surest  way 


A  PROPOSED  INTERNATIONAL  POLICY      391 

to  maintain  the  high  standard  of  living  in  our  cities, 
during  the  long  and  distressing  period  of  world  re 
construction,  is  to  put  the  urban  industrial  workers  at 
the  great  task  of  civilizing  rural  America. 

8.  Lastly,  a  procedure  too  complex  to  discuss  here 
at  any  length,  namely  the  diversion  of  a  round  quarter- 
billion  of  our  military  appropriation  to  the  scientific 
development  of  trade  and  industry  in  the  entire  Pacific 
area.  For  reason  which  I  cannot  here  go  into,  it  seems 
to  me  that  the  situation  in  Japan,  China,  Mexico,  and 
our  own  Pacific  Coast  calls  for  a  Pan-Pacific  Con 
sortium  which  will  do,  on  a  much  vaster  and  less  nar 
rowly  capitalistic  scale,  what  the  new  China  Consor 
tium  seems  to  be  aiming  at  in  one  country. 

Men  who  understand  the  problems  of  the  Pacific  ap 
parently  agree  that  there  is  only  one  way  to  attack  the 
political  and  economic  affairs  of  that  colossal  region, 
and  that  is  by  concerted  international  action.  The  re 
cent  Pan-Pacific  Congress  at  Honolulu  came  to  this  con 
clusion,  and  so  have  many  individual  experts.  Were 
the  United  States  to  join  with  Australia,  New  Zealand, 
China,  Japan,  the  Philippines,  Mexico,  Chile,  and  Can 
ada  in  a  program  of  supervising  and  aiding  the  shifting 
of  populations  and  the  development  of  backward  dis 
tricts,  we  should  be  going  far  on  the  road  toward 
the  unmistakable  goal  of  human  effort,  the  goal  that 
still  lies  centuries  away,  namely  the  intelligent  con 
trol  of  the  world  by  men  who  have  learned  to  control 
themselves. 


CHAPTER  26 

THE  GREATEK  CRISIS  BENEATH   THE   JAPANESE 
ISSUE 

THE  city  man,  reading  the  preceding  survey  and 
program,  will  probably  be  puzzled  at  the  close  con 
nection  there  drawn  between  the  Japanese  crisis  and  the 
American  farm  problem.  It  may  even  strike  him  as  a 
trifle  absurd.  For  this  reason  I  must  bring  together,  in 
the  next  few  pages,  an  array  of  fairly  well  known  facts 
about  our  agrarian  difficulties,  all  of  which  go  to  show 
that  these  latter  constitute  the  deeper  crisis  beneath  the 
conflict  which  we  find  in  Hawaii  and  California.  To  the 
American  farmer,  most  of  these  facts  have  become  com 
monplaces  ;  and  he  may  well  pass  them  over,  realizing,  as 
he  does  so,  that  they  have  not  yet  been  discovered,  much 
less  acted  upon,  by  his  brother  of  the  town,  in  whose 
hands  rests  to-day  the  power  of  shaping  our  political, 
commercial  and  diplomatic  policies. 

That  America  is  confronted  with  an  agrarian  crisis 
which  threatens  the  very  foundation  of  her  political 
structure  is  beyond  dispute.  Our  rural  population  is 
abandoning  the  farm  for  the  city;  the  present  economic 
readjustment,  with  its  sweeping  reduction  in  the  price 
of  all  raw  foodstuffs  and  agricultural  products,  has  made 
it  impossible  for  thousands  of  our  farmers  to  sell  for  even 
the  cost  of  production. 

Everywhere  we  turn  to-day  we  find  evidence  of  this 
agrarian  crisis.  It  is  not  altogether  new  and  it  is  not 
the  result  of  a  single  condition.  Furthermore,  it  cannot 

392 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  393 

be  separated  from  the  world  crisis.    What  the  outcome 
will  be  can  only  be  surmised. 

Senator  Arthur  Capper  of  Kansas  says,  "The  farm  in 
dustry  is  going  to  pot.  To-day  cotton  and  wheat  are  sell 
ing  below  the  cost  of  production,  bringing  hardships  and 
suffering  to  thousands  of  producers.  Jobbers  are  afraid 
to  buy  flour,  and  mills  are  afraid  to  grind  it."  Amer 
ica's  foundation  is  in  her  farms.  In  1820,  87.1  per  cent 
of  our  population  was  engaged  in  agriculture.  To-day 
forces  are  at  work  which  lead  Elwood  Mead  of  Cali 
fornia  to  say:  "On  its  human  and  social  side,  agricul 
ture  in  America  is  breaking  down.  Farmers  are  discour 
aged.  The  laborer  of  Anglo-Saxon  ancestry  is  disappear 
ing  or  becoming  a  hobo.  Farm-bred  boys  and  girls  are 
going  to  the  city."  It  is  this  last  sentence  which  must 
first  be  analyzed — "farm-bred  boys  and  girls  are  going 
to  the  city."  The  percentage  of  our  population  engaged 
in  agriculture  for  1920  was  about  30  per  cent  as  against 
the  87.1  per  cent  in  1820.  A  recent  survey  made  in 
Ohio  for  the  Bureau  of  Crop  Estimates  states  that  there 
was  a  net  decrease  of  60,000  in  the  number  of  men  and 
boys  working  on  Ohio  farms  for  the  year  ending  in  June, 
1920,  and  for  every  man  who  returned  to  farm  life  dur 
ing  the  year  seven  left  the  farm  for  other  employment. 
There  are  19,000  untilled  farms  in  Michigan  and  10,,000 
empty  farm  houses.  In  New  York  State  there  are  24,- 
000  vacant  farm  houses  while  last  year  35,000  men  and 
boys  left  New  York  farms  for  the  city. 

Turning  to  the  annual  report  of  the  Secretary  of  Agri 
culture  submitted  to  the  President  on  December  10,  we 
find  this  statement,  "When  American  agriculture  begins 
to  lose  ground,  the  political  stability  of  the  nation 


394  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

is  endangered. "    Writing  further,  Secretary  Meredith 
states : 

"The  history  of  agriculture  seems  to  show  that  farming  is  in 
periodic  danger  of  losing  its  grip  on  both  capital  and  work 
men  and  of  allowing  them  to  slip  away  into  city  industries. 
Statesmen  have  always  viewed  with  alarm  the  tip  of  the  scales 
from  farming  to  industry  and  from  country  life  to  urban  life. 
When  the  farm  loses  its  balance  to  the  city,  the  Nation  is 
threatened  with  a  food  shortage  or  with  dependence  upon  for 
eign  countries  for  essential  foodstuffs." 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  war  was  the  greatest  single 
factor  in  causing  the  movement  of  our  rural  population 
to  the  cities  within  the  last  four  years.  Hundreds  of 
thousands  of  farm  boys  who  were  called  to  the  war  found 
a  place  in  our  urban  centers  upon  their  return.  High 
wages  paid  by  industry  outbid  the  farmer  for  labor. 
Government  activities  gave  employment  to  thousands  of 
country-born  boys  and  girls.  The  farmer  ascribes  the 
main  reason  for  his  labor  shortage  to  these  causes,  but  he 
must  remember  that  even  before  the  war  this  movement 
to  the  city  was  increasing  at  an  alarming  rate. 

It  may  be  well  for  the  sake  of  discussion  to  consider 
the  farm-owner  and  the  farm-hand  separately,  although 
both  the  farm-hand  and  the  farm-owner  are  abandoning 
country  life.  In  any  discussion  the  following  fact  must 
be  kept  clearly  in  mind :  Every  person  who  moves  from 
the  country  to  the  city  does  so  for  individual  reasons. 
It  is  a  personal  act  due  to  causes  which  affect  him  per 
sonally.  There  is  no  mass  movement;  there  is  no  con 
certed  action;  in  no  two  cases  are  the  causes  exactly 
alike.  It  is  therefore  impossible  to  point  out  any  single 
cause  or,  still  more  important,  any  single  remedy.  In 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  395 

most  cases  these  individual  reasons  may  seem  very  trivial 
and  not  in  any  way  related  to  great  economic  forces. 
"People"  are  composed  of  a  number  of  individual  per 
sons,  and  any  action  of  people  is  an  action  of  individual 
men.  The  reason  why  thousands  are  leaving  the  farm 
for  the  city  are  human  reasons,  and  can  be  analyzed  and 
only  discussed  from  the  human  and  personal  side. 

If  the  question,  "Why  did  you  leave  the  country  for 
the  city?"  is  asked,  each  of  the  following  would  be 
typical  answers.  "Because  I  could  get  more  money." 
"Because  I  had  a  chance  to  work  up  in  a  good  business." 
"Because  I  had  gone  to  college  and  made  friends  in  the 
city  and  did  not  want  to  go  back  to  the  country."  "Be 
cause  I  could  not  see  anything  ahead  in  the  country." 
"Because  I  did  not  like  the  people  I  had  to  work  with." 
' '  Because  I  did  not  like  the  long  hours  on  a  farm. "  "  Be 
cause  it  was  too  lonesome. "  "  Because  there  was  no  place 
to  go  at  night,"  and  so  on  without  end.  In  each  case  the 
reason  is  personal,  and  the  answer  must  be  one  that 
reaches  the  personal  side.  Any  movement  or  plan  for 
getting  people  back  to  the  land  or  stopping  the  trend 
toward  the  cities  which  has  not  back  of  it  the  human 
element  must  fail.  Nothing  ever  solves  all  of  anything, 
and  no  single  reason  explains  why  people  move  to  the 
city,  and  no  single  remedy  will  stop  it. 

Because  we  are  dealing  with  human  beings,  we  must 
look  for  conditions  which  effect  human  happiness  and 
contentment.  If  a  man  leave  a  farm  because  he  hates  to 
break  the  ice  from  the  bucket  to  wash  his  face,  that  is  a 
good  reason ;  and  if  a  woman  goes  to  town  because  she 
wishes  to  gossip  with  neighbors  or  attend  the  movies,  that 
is  also  a  good  reason  for  the  simple  fact  that  it  is  the 


396  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

reason;  and  to  find  the  remedy,  we  must  first  find  the 
reason  whatever  it  may  be. 

It  is  necessary  in  analyzing-  the  problem  of  farm  labor 
and  the  tendency  of  the  farm-laborer  to  leave  the  farm 
for  industry  to  take  the  point  of  view  of  the  farm-hand. 
It  is  necessary  also  to  recognize  that  there  are  certain 
fundamental  human  traits  which  exist  in  every  person. 
One  of  the  most  important  of  these  is  personal  ambition 
as  expressed  in  the  desire  to  accumulate  wealth,  and 
another  is  the  desire  to  do  as  little  physical  work  as 
possible  for  the  amount  of  income  secured.  A  man  in 
entering  any  field  of  labor  considers  what  the  possibilities 
are  in  the  future  and  whether  or  not  he  can  ultimately 
secure  a  position  which  will  bring  him  a  greater  income 
and  at  the  same  time  demand  less  physical  labor. 

It  is  significant,  therefore,  to  recognize  that  the  po 
sition  of  the  farm-hand  offers  little  chance  of  promotion. 
Continued  service  or  experience  does  not  gain  him  any 
material  advancement  in  income  or  lessen  the  physical 
difficulties  of  his  task.  It  is  true  that  in  industry  a  large 
percentage  of  unskilled  laborers  or  semi-skilled  laborers 
are  not  able  to  reach  a  position  which  pays  more  thac  a 
mere  existence  wage  or  eliminates  the  hard  physical  labor. 
However,  there  is  always  the  possibility  of  promotion  and 
advancement,  and  there  are  always  a  few  who  succeed  in 
getting  better  positions.  The  industrial  laborer  also  re 
ceives  credit  for  his  acquired  ability,  and  even  though 
his  promotion  may  not  be  rapid  in  one  organization,  that 
experience  will  very  often  make  it  possible  for  him  to 
receive  credit  for  previous  experience  in  another  similar 
industry.  With  the  farm-hand,  however,  it  must  be 
recognized  that  the  prospect  of  promotion  or  the  possi- 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  397 

bility  of  accumulating  sufficient  capital  to  be  anything 
but  a  farm-hand  is  very  remote,  and  certainly  cannot 
be  considered  an  incentive  to  a  man  seeking  this  field  of 
labor. 

Data  collected  during  a  farm-labor  survey  in  New  Jer 
sey  showing  earning  capacity  by  various  ages  are  signifi 
cant  in  bearing  out  this  point.  The  average  age  as  shown 
is  between  twenty-four  and  twenty-five  years.  All  the 
cases  were  divided  into  five-year  groups,  and  the  aver 
age  cash  wage  estimated  for  each  group.  The  group 
from  twenty-six  to  thirty  inclusive  received  the  most  pay, 
and  from  this  age  on  the  pay  decreased.  This  means 
that  men  from  the  age  of  twenty-five  to  thirty  are  the 
best  paid  as  farm-hands.  This  is  borne  out  by  the  opin 
ion  of  the  farmers  as  to  the  age  of  men  who  are  best  able 
to  do  farm-work.  The  work  is  active  and  can  be  best 
performed  by  a  younger  man.  This  being  true,  it  means 
that  the  farm-hand  begins  going  downhill  in  earning  ca 
pacity  after  thirty  years  of  age  precisely  a-s  the  Chinese 
coolie  does.  His  added  experience  is  of  no  advantage 
to  securing  higher  wages.  Such  conditions  cannot  be 
attractive  to  an  ambitious  young  man  who  hopes  eventu 
ally  to  attain  a  position  which  may  afford  some  of  the 
luxuries  of  life  and  easier  work.  If  the  farm  is  to  hold 
the  ambitious  young  man,  it  must  make  it  possible 
for  him  to  see  a  line  of  promotion  which  will  lead  to 
more  than  what  he  can  now  find  on  the  farm  as  a  la 
borer.  "What  ultimately  becomes  of  steady  farm-hands, 
who  grow  old  without  being  able  to  accumulate  anything 
for  their  last  years,  is  a  serious  problem.  Certainly  a  life 
of  service  should  carry  with  it  some  possible  assurance  of 
the  future. 


398  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

A  farmer  who  employs  a  man  with  a  large  family  and 
expects  to  keep  him  certainly  should  see  that  the  man 
and  his  family  are  comfortably  housed  and  that  their 
living  conditions  are  so  that  he  may  expect  efficient  work 
from  the  farm-hand.  A  man  living  in  a  house  which  is 
full  of  vermin,  poorly  protected  from  the  weather,  or 
poorly  heated  cannot  be  expected  to  furnish  a  good  day's 
work.  Neither  is  it  possible  for  a  man  who  finds  it  neces 
sary  for  his  children  to  sleep  on  the  floor  or  to  go  without 
proper  nourishment  to  maintain  a  frame  of  mind  which 
can  make  him  efficient.  The  farmer  should  know  what 
the  living  conditions  of  his  hired  men  are  and  do  every 
thing  within  his  power  and  sound  business  reason  to  see 
that  they  are  made  comfortable.  This  need  not  be  in  any 
way  a  social  obligation,  but  purely  one  of  efficient  busi 
ness  management.  A  farmer  who  is  willing  to  move  a 
farm-hand  and  his  family  into  a  house  which  he  knows  to 
be  unfit  for  decent  folks  is  overlooking  one  of  the  prin 
ciples  now  recognized  in  modern  industry  to  be  as  im 
portant  as  good  equipment  and  tools. 

This  point  brings  up  the  type  of  tenant-houses  found 
on  most  farms.  The  tenant-house  must  be  considered 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  man  and  also  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  woman.  The  average  tenant-house 
on  the  Atlantic  Coast  can  be  described  as  a  two-story,  five 
or  six  room  frame-building,  heated  by  a  stove  in  the 
kitchen  and  a  stove  in  the  living-room,  the  bedrooms  be 
ing  entirely  unheated.  The  water-supply  is  usually  a 
pump  located  in  a  shed  by  the  kitchen-door  or  inside  the 
kitchen.  The  lighting  is  furnished  by  kerosene  lamps. 
The  toilet  is  an  outhouse  located  from  seventy-five  to  a 
hundred  feet  from  the  house.  This  means  that  the  aver- 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  399 

age  farm-laborer's  house  has  none  of  the  modern  improve 
ments  of  the  last  fifty  years.  Generally  speaking,  no  at 
tempt  is  made  in  constructing  a  house  to  give  it  any  archi 
tectural  beauty.  The  design  is  severe  and  ugly  in  the 
extreme,  and  there  is  nothing  about  its  appearance  which 
could  be  considered  attractive.  Its  function  is  quite 
evidently  to  furnish  a  roof  and  rooms  in  which  to  eat 
and  sleep. 

When  it  is  considered  that  the  house  in  which  a  family 
lives  is  the  most  concrete  evidence  of  their  social  status, 
and  especially  in  the  mind  of  the  child  and  mother  forms 
the  greatest  part  of  their  immediate  world,  its  importance 
cannot  be  over-estimated.  One  child  forms  its  opinion 
of  another  child  very  largely  from  the  kind  of  house  in 
which  the  child  lives.  One  of  the  strongest  social  in 
stincts  is  to  have  an  attractive  place  in  which  to  live. 
An  ugly  room  or  an  ugly  house  will  create  an  ugly  dis 
position  and  a  dissatisfied  state  of  mind. 

Every  farmer  will  admit  that  fifty  per  cent  of  the  un 
rest  of  farm-laborv  is  due  to  the  women.  Many  good 
farm-hands  are  lost  through  the  woman  becoming  dissatis 
fied  and  discontented  with  her  lot.  Unless  the  woman 
can  have  a  house  in  which  she  can  take  a  certain  amount 
of  pride  and  which  she  can  feel  is  a  suitable  dwelling  in 
which  to  live  and  rear  her  children,  it  is  impossible  for 
her  to  be  satisfied.  A  farmer  often  expresses  an  idea  that 
his  farm-help  would  not  keep  up  a  good  house  if  they  had 
one.  This  argument  is  fallacious  from  two  points  of 
view.  First  of  all,  there  is  small  incentive  in  trying  to 
keep  up  a  poor  house;  and,  secondly,  if  better  houses 
were  furnished,  it  would  be  possible  to  secure  the  type  of 
farm-hands  who  would  take  sufficient  interest  to  take 


400  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

proper  care  of  the  house.  This  better  type  of  farm-hand 
will  refuse  to  live  in  the  average  tenant-houses. 

A  striking  example  of  the  sound  business  policy  of  bet 
ter  houses  for  farm-hands  was  encountered  in  central 
New  Jersey.  One  was  in  connection  with  the  biggest 
"millionaire  farmer"  in  Chester  County.  Complaints 
were  heard  from  many  farmers  against  this  particular 
"millionaire  farmer/'  saying  that  he  was  paying  such 
high  wages  that  it  was  impossible  for  the  farmer  to  com 
pete  with  him,  and  he  was  therefore  taking  the  best  farm- 
labor  away  from  the  regular  farmer.  This  was  carefully 
investigated.  It  was  found  that  this  particular  man 
was  paying  but  little  more  than  the  regular  farmers  of 
the  district,  demanding  the  same  number  of  hours  and 
the  same  character  of  work.  The  difference  in  wage  was 
of  no  particular  significance,  but  the  type  of  houses  fur 
nished  was  of  very  great  importance.  The  manager  of 
this  farm  stated  that  he  was  finding  no  difficulty  in  secur 
ing  high-class  farm-hands,  and  that  in  his  opinion  he 
was  receiving  more  work  per  dollar  than  the  general 
farmer  of  that  community. 

A  visit  to  a  typical  house  bore  out  the  statement. 
There  was  no  question  but  that  he  had  secured  a  much 
more  intelligent  and  potentially  valuable  type  of  farm 
hand  than  the  neighboring  farmers.  The  houses  were 
being  rented  to  the  farm-hand  at  a  figure  which  would 
cover  only  interest  and  depreciation,  since  the  house  was 
considered  a  part  of  the  necessary  farm  equipment. 
These  houses  were  furnished  with  all  modern  conven 
iences.  The  women,  all  of  whom  had  previously  lived  in 
the  usual  type  of  farm-laborer's  house,  were  emphatic  in 
the  statement  that  they  would  never  return  to  one  which 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  401 

had  no  modern  improvements.  The  homes  were  all 
neatly  kept,  and  there  was  striking  evidence  of  pride  in 
their  appearance.  From  the  point  of  view  of  efficient 
labor,  contented  employees,  and  a  sense  of  contributing 
to  the  happiness  of  the  farm-hands,  it  is  doubtful  if  any 
better  investment  could  have  been  made  by  this  "mil 
lionaire  farmer." 

Many  farmers  seemed  to  feel  it  necessary  to  scatter 
tenant-houses  in  the  far  corners  of  their  farm  in  order  to 
prevent  disturbances  among  the  various  families.  This 
point  was  investigated  thoroughly  during  the  survey  men 
tioned  above,  and  found  to  be  without  foundation.  It 
is  against  the  natural  instinct  of  people  to  live  in  an 
islolated  locality  and  away  from  other  people.  A  per 
son  does  not  like  to  live  in  a  house  which  stands  by 
itself  out  in  an  open  field  any  more  than  he  would  choose 
the  middle  of  an  open  field  as  a  place  to  sleep  when  it 
would  be  possible  for  him  to  get  near  trees  or  buildings. 

One  large  New  Jersey  operator  expressed  the  opinion 
that  the  whole  problem  of  employment  was  one  of  money, 
and  if  the  farmer  was  willing  to  pay  enough  money  he 
could  get  all  the  men  he  wanted.  There  is  no  doubt  but 
that  this  is  true.  At  the  same  time  there  is  no  doubt 
that  there  are  other  considerations  besides  money.  If  a 
man  were  paid  enough  money,  he  would  be  willing  to 
live  in  a  hole  in  the  ground,  but  it  is  an  assured  fact  that 
it  would  be  more  economical  to  pay  him  less  money  and 
offer  him  a  better  place  to  live. 

The  farmer  who  is  the  most  successful  is  the  farmer 
who  recognizes  that  he  must  have  farm-hands  if  he  would 
make  any  money  himself  and  who  is  willing  to  furnish 
conditions  which  will  secure  his  labor  even  in  competition 


402  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

with  industry.  It  must  be  remembered  that  working- 
people  to-day  are  demanding  better  conditions  as  ex 
pressed  both  in  wage  and  living  conditions  than  they  were 
five  years  ago.  It  might  be  well  here  to  quote  from  a 
speech  delivered  by  Ambassador  Geddes,  who  says: 

"So  far  only  the  swell  of  the  storm  centered  in  Europe  laps 
your  coasts,  yet  your  daily  press  is  already  filled  with  news  of 
strikes  and  what  is  vaguely  called  industrial  unrest.  ...  In 
Europe  we  know  that  an  age  is  dying.  Here  it  would  be  easy 
to  miss  the  signs  of  coming  change,  but  I  have  little  doubt  that 
it  will  come.  A  realization  of  the  aimlessness  of  life  lived  to 
labor  and  to  die,  having  achieved  nothing  but  avoidance  of 
starvation,  and  the  birth  of  children  also  doomed  to  the  weary 
treadmill,  has  seized  the  minds  of  millions." 

There  is  nothing  constructive  in  the  argument  of  the 
farmer  that  city  industries  and  government  are  taking 
away  his  labor.  This  conditions  exists,  and  cannot  be 
changed  by  the  farmer.  Neither  is  it  of  advantage  to 
the  farmer  to  allow  his  land  to  remain  idle.  The  policy 
of  not  farming  land  simply  because  farm-labor  cannot  be 
secured  at  a  figure  which  the  farmer  may  consider  suffi 
cient  is  decidedly  short-sighted.  Not  only  does  the  value 
of  the  farm  depreciate  much  more  than  the  difference  in 
the  cost  of  securing  labor  would  be  through  not  being 
cultivated,  but  the  profit  of  farming  is  also  lost.  It  is 
true  that  there  is  an  actual  shortage  of  labor  on  the 
farms.  This  is  primarily  due  to  a  culmination  of  cir 
cumstances  resulting  in  the  present  crisis.  For  years 
the  farm  has  been  backward  in  the  opportunities  and 
conditions  given  to  its  labor.  It  has  offered  no  induce 
ment  to  the  ambitions,  industrious  young  man  who 
wishes  to  accumulate  wealth  and  has  no  capital  to 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  403 

start,  As  a  result  the  best  of  the  boys  from  the  coun 
try  have  gone  to  the  city;  not  so  much  because  the 
city  pulled  them  as  because  the  country  and  the  farm 
have  pushed  them. 

There  is  no  constructive  value  in  condemning  hu 
man  traits  which  may  seem  to  be  selfish.  People  are 
going  to  get  all  they  can  for  the  least  possible  effort. 
The  farmer  is  prone  to  condemn  the  farm-hand  for 
leaving  conditions  which  did  not  offer  him  any  pos 
sible  outlet  for  his  ambition.  He  also  often  condemns 
the  wife  of  the  farm-hand  because  she  is  not  willing  to 
earn  a  little  extra  for  the  family  by  outside  work. 
This  point  is  entirely  negative  and  can  in  no  way  bet 
ter  the  labor  conditions  on  the  farm. 

Other  than  the  question  of  wage,  the  farm-hand  is 
most  concerned  with  the  long  hours  which  are  de 
manded  of  him.  On  most  farms  the  minimum  for 
field  work  is  ten  hours  per  day.  This  does  not  in 
clude  approximately  one  hour  for  chores  and  barn- 
work.  When  compared  with  the  eight-hour  day  of  in 
dustry,  it  is  easy  to  see  why  the  farm-hand  objects  to 
the  long  hours  of  the  country.  On  dairy  farms  the 
hours  outside  of  chores  are  usually  from  six  to  six, 
with  one  hour  for  noon.  There  is  no  reason  why  the 
experience  of  industry  with  shorter  hours  should  not 
be  duplicated  to  a  large  degree  in  farm-labor. 

It  is  hard  to  imagine  any  work  on  a  farm  except  the 
operation  of  a  tractor,  where  it  would  not  be  possible 
to  accomplish  as  much  in  nine  hours  as  in  ten  if  the 
farm-hand  had  the  incentive  to  do  so.  On  some  farms 
there  is  no  work  on  Saturday  afternoon  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  year.  If  the  farm-hand  is  sup- 


404,  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

posed  to  work  on  Sunday,  he  should  receive  half  a 
day  at  least  twice  a  month  except  during  the  busiest 
season.  This  allows  an  opportunity  to  go  to  town  and 
make  necessary  purchases  and  enjoy  a  change  of  sur 
roundings. 

Fifty  per  cent  of  the  men  who  remain  on  the  farm 
to-day  are  worth  only  the  minimum  wage.  Very  often 
the  damage  which  they  may  cause  by  lack  of  intelli 
gence  or  indifferent  work  makes  them  a  poor  invest 
ment  at  any  figure.  The  farmer  complains  because  he 
cannot  get  more  intelligent  labor,  but  he  cannot  expect 
to  as  long  as  special  intelligence  and  ability  is  given  no 
recognition.  A  man  of  superior  ability  and  intelli 
gence  will  not  work  with  an  inferior  man  for  the  same 
wage.  Certain  farms  have  arbitrarily  paid  their  best 
men  from  fifteen  to  twenty-five  per  cent  more  than 
their  basic  pay.  Contrary  to  general  opinion,  it  has 
not  caused  any  difficulty. 

The  life  of  the  large  percentage  of  farm-hands  is  a 
sordid  monotony  of  existence  which  allows  for  no  op 
portunity  of  expression  and  seems  to  have  no  outlet. 
It  is  hard  to  imagine  what  could  be  more  deadening 
than  an  existence  where  every  cent  of  money  is  spent 
week  by  week  with  no  recreational  opportunity  and  no 
prospect  of  future  conditions  which  will  make  any 
thing  else  possible.  Unfortunately,  the  attitude  of  the 
farmer  is  very  often  antagonistic  to  the  welfare  of  the 
farm-hands.  This  may  be  typified  by  an  expression 
of  a  certain  farmer  in  regard  to  the  survey  in  New 
Jersey,  who  remarked  that  "he  would  rather  not  have 
any  one  talk  to  the  farm-hands,  as  it  might  start  them 
to  thinking. " 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  405 

Should  a  thousand  young  men  who  had  left  the  farm 
be  questioned  and  their  answers  tabulated,  it  would  be 
possible  to  select  certain  reasons  which  would  include 
a  large  proportion  of  the  answers  received.  Those 
which  would  stand  out  most  strikingly  would  be 
wages,  hours,  recreation,  opportunity,  housing,  sanita 
tion,  association,  education,  or  a  combination  of  many 
of  these.  Some  of  these  may  seem  purely  economic, 
but  most  of  them  are  social  and  touch  the  purely  so 
cial  instincts  which  are  related  directly  to  individual 
happiness  and  contentment.  Every  social  influence  is 
directly  related  to  standard  of  living,  for  by  standard 
of  living  we  refer  to  those  things  which  make  for  com 
fort  and  enjoyment.  We  are  safe  in  saying,  there 
fore,  that  the  difference  in  the  "standard  of  living" 
between  the  city  and  the  country  would  include  many 
of  the  individual  reasons  given  for  preferring  city  to 
country  life. 

The  social  development  of  a  country  is  measured  by 
the  standard  of  living  of  its  people.  America  stands 
first  in  the  world  in  maintaining  a  high  standard.  It 
is  in  this  direction  that  almost  our  entire  industrial  de 
velopment  has  striven  for  the  last  generation. 

The  part  this  aspiration  plays  in  the  thinking  and  the 
deeds  of  the  native  American  is  powerfully  described  by 
Elwood  Mead,  who  has  written  this  little  autobiography 
and  criticism  for  us: 

"It  is  desirable  that  many  young  people  should  go  from  the 
country  to  the  city.  A  movement  in  both  directions  is  desir 
able.  The  flow  from  the  country  is  needed  to  renew  the  vigor 
of  city  life.  The  seriousness  of  the  present  movement  comes 
from  its  magnitude  and  its  causes.  Landowners,  tenants  and 


406  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

the  young  people  are  leaving  the  land  to  such  an  extent  that  in 
agricultural  states  like  Missouri  and  Iowa,  less  people  are  on 
farms  than  ten  years  ago.  The  loss  of  the  population  does 
not  tell  the  whole  story.  In  many  cases  the  old  American 
stock  is  leaving  the  farms,  and  its  place  is  being  taken  by  im 
migrants  from  southern  and  eastern  people.  If  he  has  to 
choose  between  becoming  a  member  of  a  highly  organized  and 
adequately  paid  union  in  a  city  and  competing  with  the  coolies 
in  the  country,  he  will  go  to  the  city.  Bringing  in  the  negro 
made  poor  white  trash  out  of  the  landless  Anglo-Saxon  in  the 
South.  Bringing  into  this  country  as  farm  workers  the  back 
ward  people  of  the  Old  World  has  created  conditions  which 
are  driving  Anglo-Saxons,  German- Americans,  Danish-Ameri 
cans  and  Irish-Americans  off  the  land. 

"To  find  the  origin  of  this,  we  have  to  go  back  more  than 
half  a  century  to  the  time  when  we  had  a  broad  agricultural 
foundation  in  our  great  areas  of  unpeopled  public  land. 
Agriculture  needed  railroads  and  factories.  Because  of  these 
needs,  this  nation  wisely  entered  on  a  policy  of  fostering  city 
industries.  We  gave  land  grants  and  money  subsidies  to  rail 
roads,  money  bonuses  to  factories.  The  tariff  helped  build 
up  the  city  and  made  the  farmer  pay  part  of  the  bill.  We 
passed  laws  which  gave  privileges  to  corporations  so  that  they 
could  form  great  industrial  combinations.  Our  policy  of 
massed  production  drew  the  small  town  factory  into  the  city, 
lessened  the  farmer's  local  market  and  made  him  dependent 
more  and  more  on  distant  ones.  In  time,  corporations  be 
came  trusts;  the  farmer  lost  control  of  the  prices  of  what  he 
has  to  sell  and  of  the  things  he  has  to  buy. 

"So  long  as  there  was  free  land,  there  was  a  balance  between 
the  growth  of  city  and  country  even  if  the  wages  and  returns 
from  farming  were  not  equal  to  those  of  the  store  and  factory. 
The  rise  in  land  values  made  up  for  low  prices  in  crops,  but 
when  the  free  land  disappeared  and  privately  owned  land  be 
gan  to  rise  rapidly  in  price,  the  city  began  to  make  its  ap- 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  407 

peal  to  intelligent  and  aspiring  boys  and  girls,  the  very  class 
that  the  country  could  not  afford  to  lose. 

"The  present  generation  of  farm  boys  has  been  lost,  and 
we  ought  now  to  begin  thinking  about  how  we  are  to  save  the 
next  crop.  If  we  are  to  make  this  attempt,  then  a  part  of 
the  thinking  must  be  given  to  whether  bringing  in  a  million 
Chinese  coolies  will  help  keep  Americans  on  the  land.  Per 
sonally,  I  do  not  have  to  speculate  about  what  would  happen. 
**I  am  the  son  of  a  farmer  and  grew  up  on  a  farm  in  a  part 
of  the  country  where  most  of  the  hired  labor  was  negroes. 
As  a  boy  I  plowed  corn  and  dug  potatoes  alongside  of  a  black 
man  who  had  been  a  slave.  He  was  paid  50  cents  a  day  and 
out  of  that  he  boarded  himself.  That  was  the  measure  of  my 
earning  power  on  a  farm.  It  made  me  furious  every  time 
I  thought  of  it,  though  I  love  farm  life  and  believe  that  I 
would  have  been  a  good  farmer;  but  the  social  conditions 
created  by  ignorant,  poorly  paid  farm  workers  drove  me  to  the 
city. 

"My  boyhood  on  a  farm  made  me  realize  also  the  evils 
of  tenantry.  My  father's  farm  was  almost  surrounded  by  a 
great  estate  owned  by  a  non-resident.  It  was  farmed  by  ten 
ants  who  were  Civil  War  refugees  from  the  mountains  of 
Tennessee  and  Kentucky.  They  were  not  good  farmers. 
They  had  no  interests  in  community  affairs.  The  children  did 
not  care  to  go  to  school,  had  no  interest  in  games  or  books. 
When  they  met  together  their  talk  was  mainly  of  hunting, 
fighting  or  sex  exploits.  On  rainy  days  nothing  could  be 
more  dreary.  There  was  no  place  to  go  and  no  one  to  see. 
When  I  went  to  college,  I  went  because  it  was  the  surest  road 
away  from  the  farm. 

"Last  year  I  saw  40  people  stretched  out  in  a  row,  thinning 
a  California  beet  field.  About  one  fourth  of  them  were 
women ;  five  wore  Indian  turbans,  fifteen  the  peaked  hat  of  the 
Mexican,  several  had  the  whiskered  face  of  the  Russian  and 
there  was  one  negro.  I  pictured  myself  as  an  American  boy 


408  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

working  in  that  crowd.  I  knew  I  would  feel  like  a  hobo  and 
if  I  stayed  with  them  long  enough,  I  would  be  a  hobo,  not 
because  of  the  work  but  because  of  my  associates.  If  those 
workers  had  been  Americans,  I  could  have  talked  to  the  man 
next  to  me  about  my  plans  for  buying  a  farm  or  about  who 
ought  to  be  governor,  but  I  could  not  talk  to  the  Hindoo,  the 
peon,  the  women  or  the  negro  because  their  habits,  their 
thoughts  and  their  ambitions  were  so  different  from  mine  that 
there  was  a  blank  wall  between  us.  All  the  time  I  would  re 
alize  that  I  was  working  with  a  crowd  who  were  there  be 
cause  they  worked  for  small  pay,  were  willing  to  live  in  bunk 
houses  and  did  not  resent  the  absence  of  any  social  status. 

"The  Hindoos  are  industrious.  I  have  no  doubt  they  are 
good  citizens  in  India.  The  Mexican  peon  has  many  fine  quali 
ties  but  he  has  been  oppressed  for  centuries  and  lacks  educa 
tion  and  ambition.  The  objection  to  the  bringing  in  of  these 
backward  people  to  form  a  part  of  rural  communities  is  that 
they  do  not  fit  into  the  picture  if  we  are  to  have  social  and 
economic  democracy  on  the  land. 

"The  time  has  come  when  we  must  give  more  attention  to  the 
contribution  which  rural  life  makes  to  human  society.  We 
breed  magnificent  hogs,  but  we  are  permitting  the  fine  Ameri 
can  stock  which  settled  and  developed  this  nation  to  be  dis 
placed  by  human  mongrels. 

"On  Cape  Cod  half-breed  negroes  are  displacing  the  pilgrims7 
descendants.  The  pioneers  of  California  were  among  the  finest 
examples  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  yet  in  the  irrigrated  area  of 
this  State,  their  children  and  grandchildren  are  being  dis 
placed  by  colonies  of  Asiatics  who  are  clannish,  who  seek  to 
live  the  life  of  the  country  they  left,  who  every  year  form 
new  centers  and  extend  the  old  one. 

"The  culture  of  Greece  was  in  the  city.  Slaves  tilled  the 
land,  and  the  nation  died.  The  end  of  Home  began  when  sol 
diers  ceased  to  be  farmers. 

"I  do  not  believe  that  we  can  have  a  great  civilization  based 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  409 

on  a  high  standard  of  living  in  the  city  and  a  low  standard  of 
living  in  the  country.  I  do  not  believe  that  we  can  maintain 
economic  democracj'  unless  our  rural  life  is  founded  on  a  com 
munity  of  blood.  That  does  not  mean  that  all  our  people 
must  have  skin  of  the  same  tint  or  that  their  ancestors  must 
come  from  the  same  country,  but  it  does  mean  that  they  must 
have  an  ancestry  holding  the  same  ideals  and  a  desire  to  adopt 
the  standard  of  life  that  prevails  here." 

The  whole  question  of  farm-labor  turns  around  the 
standard  of  living.  Any  cause,  whether  it  be  poor 
housing,  lack  of  recreation,  or  the  importation  of  an 
inferior  race  of  people,  which  makes  the  standard  of 
living  in  the  country  inferior  to  that  of  the  city  will 
have  but  one  result.  The  American  people  will  do 
what  they  have  been  doing — find  their  place  in  our 
urban  communities  where  it  is  possible  to  at  least  strive 
for  a  standard  of  living  which  would  be  impossible  in 
the  country. 

The  California  farmer  complains  because  he  was  not 
able  to  hire  white  labor.  The  Japanese  were  first  able 
to  gain  a  foothold  in  California  as  laborer  on  farms  be 
cause  they  were  more  reliable  than  white  men.  The 
white  California  farm-laborer  of  fifteen  years  ago  was 
a  very  inferior  type  of  workman  not  because  he  was 
not  intelligent  and  could  not  work,  but  because  he 
would  not  have  been  a  farm-hand  unless  he  was  ab 
normal  in  some  phase  of  his  conduct.  Ninety  per  cent 
of  them  were  periodical  drunkards.  The  other  ten 
per  cent  were  only  temporarily  in  that  field. 

Let  us  consider  the  life  of  the  California  farm- 
laborer  and  the  conditions  under  which  he  worked  and 
see  if  it  is  possible  to  find  a  reason  for  the  Japanese 


410  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

invasion  and  perhaps  apply  that  same  reason  to  the 
displacement  of  the  American  farm-hand  by  inferior 
European  races  in  other  regions. 

California  is  made  up  of  large  ranch  holdings  and 
smaller  fruit-farms.  During  the  harvest  season  men 
are  employed  for  only  a  short  period  at  one  place,  and 
then  move  on  to  another  job.  On  the  large  grain- 
ranches  and  fruit-farms  the  hands  are  usually  paid  a 
certain  amount  a  day  and  board.  Until  the  State  Com 
mission  of  Immigration  and  Housing  took  the  matter  in 
charge,  the  men  slept  almost  anywhere.  There  is  one 
story  which,  although  exaggerated,  expresses  the  whole 
scheme.  A  man  was  hired  in  a  city  for  work  on  a 
ranch.  When  he  arrived  he  asked  the  owner  where 
he  would  sleep.  The  owner  answered,  "There  are  640 
acres  here;  you  can  take  your  choice."  Men  slept  in 
barns,  on  hay-stacks,  or  out  of  doors.  All  men  carried 
their  own  blankets.  Often  only  men  would  be  hired 
who  had  blankets,  as  no  provision  was  made  for  hous 
ing  them.  At  times  they  were  furnished  a  cot  to  sleep 
on,  but  generally  nothing  at  all.  They  ate  in  the 
1 '  cook-house, "  surrounded  by  thousands  of  flies  from 
scattered  manure-piles.  Their  working  day  was  usu 
ally  ten  hours,  and  if  they  drove  a  team  they  had  to 
feed  and  curry  before  breakfast  and  feed  at  night.  In 
1911  the  wage  was  from  $1.10  to  $1.25  a  day  and  food. 
Very  often  some  of  the  men  were  Mexicans,  but  colored 
help  was  seldom  employed. 

No  attempt  was  made  to  give  them  comfortable  con 
ditions.  These  men  usually  went  to  the  nearest  town 
about  once  a  month  purposely  to  get  drunk  and  spend 
all  their  money.  After  a  day  or  so  the  money  was 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  411 

gone,  and  they  returned  to  the  same  job  or  to  another 
like  it.  Not  ten  per  cent  of  their  total  earnings  went  for 
any  purpose  but  drink  and  sex  exploits.  I  was  in 
formed  by  one  man  that  he  had  not  bought  a  new  suit 
of  clothes  for  twenty  years.  Another  man  who  owned 
a  little  shack  near  the  coast  told  me  that  he  had  been 
trying  for  two  years  to  get  past  Bakersfield,  but  that 
each  time  he  went  to  town  with  his  earnings,  intending 
to  buy  a  ticket  and  get  home,  some  one  asked  him  to 
take  a  drink,  and  he  could  not  refuse.  One  drink 
settled  it. 

Volumes  could  be  written  about  the  conditions  on 
California  ranches  and  farms  as  they  were  ten  years 
ago.  The  Wheatfield  Riots  of  California  were  directly 
due  to  housing  conditions.  It  took  most  drastic  laws 
and  the  police  authority  of  the  State  to  correct  them. 
No  self-respecting  man  who  could  have  earned  a  living 
at  any  other  form  of  work  would  have  followed  the 
California  ranches.  The  conditions  in  the  San  Joa- 
quin  and  Sacramento  valleys  were  the  worst,  and  it 
may  be  of  interest  to  note  that  it  was  in  these  regions 
that  the  Japanese  first  got  their  foothold  because  it 
was  impossible  to  get  reliable  white  help. 

In  Kern  County  there  was  a  string  of  ranches  known 
to  the  "bindler  stiff"  (a  worker  who  carried  a 
blanket)  as  the  ''dirty-plate  route"  because  any  man. 
who  stopped  to  ask  for  a  meal  at  the  cook-house  had  to 
wait  until  the  regular  men  were  finished,  and  then 
the  cook  would  give  him  something  to  eat  on  a  dirty 
plate. 

Most  of  these  men  worked  on  ranches  because  they 
could  not  keep  sober  long  enough  to  work  in  a  city  and 


412  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

not  from  a  natural  choice  for  country  work.  Any 
young  man  who  worked  on  these  ranches  during  the 
summer  was  either  demoralized  by  the  influence  and 
became  one  of  the,  army  or  sought  other  work  as  soon 
as  he  had  saved  a  little  money. 

Nothing  could  have  been  more  destructive  than  this 
life,  and  it  is  to  the  credit  of  the  vast  majority  of 
American  workers  that  labor  was  difficult  to  secure. 
During  the  last  few  years  since  California  has  been 
without  saloons,  this  travelling  worker  has  largely  dis 
appeared  from  the  ranches,  and  would  no  doubt  be 
found  at  present  in  the  cities.  White  farm -labor  has 
consequently  been  very  difficult  to  obtain,  making  even 
a  greater  demand  for  the  Hindu,  Japanese,  and  Mexi 
can,  who  do  not  demand  a  standard  of  living  that  the 
American  strives  for.  Yet  we  learn  that  even  dur 
ing  the  last  three  years,  which  have  been  abnormal  as 
far  as  a  shortage  of  labor  in  all  lines  of  work  are  con 
cerned,  the  Valley  Fruit  Growers'  Association  of 
Fresno,  with  a  membership  of  three  thousand,  has  dem 
onstrated  beyond  question  that  sufficient  American 
farm-labor  can  be  readily  secured  provided  comfort 
able  housing,  substantial  food,  properly  served,  and 
some  recreation  is  provided  upon  the  farms. 

In  July,  1920,  the  writer  spoke  with  the  agricultural 
secretary  of  the  Los  Angeles  Chamber  of  Commerce 
concerning  labor  problems  in  California  with  special 
reference  to  the  Japanese  invasion.  He  said  in  sub 
stance  : 

"The  Japanese  are  able  to  lease  land  largely  because  the 
farmers  cannot  get  help.  Americans  will  not  work  on  the 
farms  because  they  will  not  stand  for  the  hours  and  living  con- 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  413 

ditions.  The  hardest  man  we  have  to  deal  with  in  trying  to  im 
prove  working  conditions  on  our  farms  is  the  Middle-western 
farmer  who  comes  out  here  and  buys  a  ranch  and  just  because 
he  has  been  raised  to  believe  that  life  should  be  all  hard  work 
and  no  pleasure  he  expects  to  get  men  to  work  twelve  hours  a 
day  with  no  opportunity  for  recreation.  People  in  California 
think  there  is  something  to  life  besides  hard  work,  so  you  find 
that  the  lad  who  should  be  in  the  country  is  in  the  city,  where 
he  can  find  shorter  hours  and  some  form  of  pleasure." 

If  the  Middle-western  farmer  practises  this  method 
in  California,  he  evidently  learned  it  in  Iowa  or  Ne 
braska,  which  may  account  somewhat  for  the  labor 
shortage  in  those  States. 

Many  people  have  advocated  that  the  best  form  of 
ending  the  labor  shortage  would  be  to  bring  in  a 
million  Chinese  coolies.  The  result  of  bringing  in  any 
class  of  inferior  labor  into  farming  districts  can  only 
have  the  effect  of  driving  out  the  American  laborer  and 
American  farmer  as  well,  for  as  soon  as  this  cheap 
labor  is  able  to  lease  or  purchase  land  themselves,  the 
American  farmer  cannot  possible  compete  with  them. 
When  the  Japanese  first  came  into  California  no  one 
considered  them  as  land-owners  or  producers;  they 
were  simply  cheap  labor  who  would  put  up  with  in 
ferior  living  standards,  and  as  such  were  welcomed 
by  the  farmer.  But  when  they  became  land-owners  it 
was  the  farmer  who  protested  most  loudly. 

There  are  a  number  of  organizations  in  existence 
whose  purpose  it  is  to  turn  the  flow  of  our  European 
immigration  to  the  farm.  Without  close  scrutiny  this 
would  seem  the  ideal  solution  of  our  immigrant  prob 
lem.  There  is  a  shortage  of  farm-labor,  and  many  of 


414  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

these  immigrants  were  farmers  in  Europe.  But  most 
of  our  present  immigrants  are  from  southern  Europe 
and  vastly  different  in  their  customs  and  standards  of 
living  from  the  German,  Norwegian,  Danish,  or  Irish 
immigrants  who  supplied  the  stock  of  our  present 
American  farmer.  More  immigrants  of  this  same 
stock  could  be  easily  assimilated,  but  a  general  influx 
of  southern  Europeans  to  our  farms  can  only  result  in 
the  displacement  of  our  American  farmers,  who  are 
not  willing  to  accept  the  standard  of  living  of  these 
people.  Unless  they  can  accept  this  standard  they 
cannot  meet  the  competition  of  these  new  immigrants. 

Any  one  investigating  the  living  conditions  of 
Italians,  who  furnish  a  large  proportion  of  the  short- 
time  harvest  help  in  the  East,  must  realize  that  our 
American  farm  boy  cannot  and  does  not  wish  to  com 
pete  with  these  people.  I  have  one  case  in  mind  where 
150  Italian  men,  women,  and  children  occupied  a 
building  all  during  one  summer  which  was  40  feet 
wide,  110  feet  long,  10  feet  high  at  the  center,  and  5 
feet  at  the  sides,  with  only  a  single  door  2l/2  by  5  feet 
at  each  end  and  not  one  window.  The  shacks  and 
sanitary  conditions  in  the  cranberry-picking  camps  of 
New  Jersey  are  impossible,  not  even  the  Mexican  or 
negro  being  willing  to  live  under  such  conditions. 

However,  they  seem  at  least  tolerable  to  the  Italian. 
This  influx  of  our  present  type  of  immigrant  to  the 
farm  is  one  of  the  direct  causes  of  our  American  farm 
youth  turning  to  the  city.  If  America  can  afford  to 
have  our  old  rural  Anglo-Saxon  stock  supplanted  by 
the  Latin,  we  are  doing  no  harm  in  placing  these 
people  on  the  farm;  but  if  we  wish  to  maintain  or  re- 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  415 

gain  the  American  as  a  farmer,  we  must  not  force  him 
to  meet  competition  by  lowering  his  standard  of  liv 
ing. 

During  the  debate  on  the  bill  restricting  immigra 
tion  Representative  Rainey  of  Illinois  offered  an 
amendment  to  exempt  from  the  provision  of  the  bill 
immigrants  who  wished  to  enter  agricultural  pursuits. 
He  is  quoted  as  saying:  "But  organized  labor  has  re 
fused  to  enter  the  field  of  farm-labor.  Unless  the 
farmers  can  get  cheaper  labor  you  still  find  that  they 
will  only  be  able  to  till  a  part  of  their  farms  with 
their  wives  and  children  and  produce  little  more  than 
enough  for  themselves/* 

Does  his  suggestion  mean  that  organized  labor 
should  be  willing  to  work  as  cheap  farm-labor  and 
accept  the  standard  of  living  which  cheap  farm-labor 
must  accept?  Cheap  farm-labor  means  a  mere  exist 
ence  wage,  as  shown  by  the  comparison  of  farm-labor 
budgets  with  estimated  cost  of  living.  To  return  to 
the  farm  as  cheap-labor  means  losing  all  that  has  been 
gained  toward  reaching  a  better  standard  of  living 
such  as  Americans  endeavor  to  maintain. 

No  self-respecting  American  will  work  on  a  farm  as 
cheap  labor,  and  if  it  is  cheaper  labor  that  the  farmer 
must  have,  then  it  cannot  be  American  labor.  The 
price  of  farm-land,  the  competition  with  races  who  do 
not  have  the  American  standard,  the  failure  of  the 
country  to  keep  pace  with  the  city  in  education,  recre 
ation,  aiid  sanitary  conditions,  all  tend  to  keep  the 
American  away  from  the  farm.  Our  immigration 
policy  can  not  be  influenced  by  the  demand  for  a  type 
of  laborer  who  will  be  willing  to  work  at  such  low 


416  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Y   wages   that   they   will   force   what   Americans   yet   re- 

*    main  on  the  farms  to  the  city.     Such   a  policy  must 

^    be  based  upon  issues  which  will  have  a  fundamental 

and  permanent  effect  upon  our  political  structure.     If 

V  we  decide  that  the  farm  is  the  place  to  which  we  must 

£     send  these  Italians,   Checho-Slavs,   Greeks,  Armenians, 

^       Poles,  and  Spaniards,  it  can  be  done  only  at  the  price 

•4s      of  further  displacement   of  American   farmers  by  in- 

i        feripr  races  from  Europe. 

If  it  were  only  the  farm-laborers  who  were  leaving 
the  country  for  the  city,  the  causes  could  be  readily 
brought  to  light;  but  we  find  that  farmers  and  sons  of 
farmers  are  abandoning  their  land  for  city  life. 
Again,  however,  we  can  say  that  the  farmer  who  rents 
or  abandons  his  farm  does  so  for  one  of  two  general 
reasons.  Either  he  does  not  like  farm  life  or  is  not 
making  enough  money ;  or,  again,  it  may  be  a  combi 
nation  of  the  two,  and  he  will  say  that  he  is  not  mak 
ing  enough  money  to  offset  the  hardships  of  farm  life. 
Unless  he  is  a  prosperous  farmer  who  has  a  modern 
farm-house,  with  all  conveniences  and  an  automobile, 
the  social  reasons  of  both  himself  and  his  family  for 
wishing  to  leave  the  farm  will  be  much  the  same  as  for 
the  farm-hand — the  inferior  standard  of  living  in  the 
country  as  compared  with  our  cities. 

If  it  is  a  question  of  financial  return,  we  come  to 
the  second  phase  of  the  agrarian  crisis;  namely,  the 
inability  of  the  farmer  to  secure  an  adequate  and 
just  price  for  his  product.  "We  need  only  to  glance 
at  the  head-lines  of  our  daily  papers  to  realize  the 
seriousness  of  the  present  economic  readjustment  to 
the  farmer.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  417 

America  he  and  his  kind  have  been  aroused  to  the  need 
of  concerted  action. 

From  Kansas  City  comes  the  report  of  the  plan  pre 
sented  at  the  International  Farm  Congress  to  organize 
every  agricultural  community  in  the  nation  on  an  im 
mense  scale  to  fight  the  farmers'  battles  and  obtain 
"economic  justice"  for  producers  of  foodstuffs  and 
gain  relief  from  an  "intolerable  economic  situation. " 
Such  an  organization  seems  inevitable.  Only  through 
combination  will  it  be  possible  for  them  to  force  prices 
up  to  a  fair-profit  scale.  The  use  of  cheap  labor  in  an 
effort  to  reduce  the  cost  of  production  can  only  drive 
more  of  our  American  farmers  to  the  city,  and  still 
further  weaken  the  soundness  of  our  social  structure. 
At  best  such  action  would  only  postpone  the  present 
crisis  a  few  years,  when  its  solution  will  be  hopeless. 

The  predicament  which  faces  the  farmers  is  exem 
plified  by  a  survey  made  by  the  University  of  Ne 
braska  relative  to  the  cost  of  feeding  beef  cattle.  The 
report  reads  in  part: 

"The  fact  thus  far  brought  out  by  the  investigation  would  in 
dicate  that  during  the  past  two  years,  in  the  district  covered 
by  the  survey,  cattle  feeding  was  a  precarious  venture,  more 
likely  to  be  unprofitable  than  not.  There  was  an  average  loss 
per  head  of  $3.17  on  the  cattle  for  which  records  were  ob 
tained  in  1918-19,  and  of  $10.69  and  $14.57  on  two  groups  for 
which  records  were  obtained  in  1919-20." 

A  news  despatch  from  Washington  on  December  18 
tells  of  the  steps  to  revive  the  War  Finance  Corpora 
tion.  Also  a  bill  known  as  the  Fordney  Emergency 
Tariff  was  passed  by  the  committee  in  shape  for  final 


418  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

action.  This  bill  is  designed  as  a  measure  to  shield 
agriculturists  from  further  price  decline.  The  pro 
ducts  to  be  covered  by  this  new  bill  are  wheat,  wool, 
mutton,  cattle,  flour,  corn,  sheep,  onions,  peanuts,  rice, 
potatoes,  long-staple  cotton,  cotton-seed,  cocoanut, 
peanut,  and  soy-bean  oils.  An  attempt  was  made  to 
include  many  other  products  as  well  as  manufactured 
articles  in  this  bill. 

Dr.  S.  W.  McClure  of  the  National  Wool  Growers' 
Association  made  this  statement  to  the  Senate  com 
mittee:  "We  are  being  ruined  by  the  import  of  wool 
and  meats.  Something  must  be  done  or  else  it  means 
universal  bankruptcy  in  the  West.  There  is  now  in 
storage  996,000,000  pounds  of  wool,  enough  for  two 
years'  supply."  He  pointed  out  that  Argentine  wool 
was  selling  here  for  nine  cents  a  pound,  while  it  cost 
the  American  grower  six  cents  a  pound  to  market  his 
product.  He  gave  an  estimate  that  ninety-five  per 
cent  of  the  1920  clip  in  the  United  States  was  still 
unsold. 

There  is  hardly  a  single  agricultural  product  that 
was  not  selling  below  its  cost  of  production  on  Janu 
ary  1,  1921.  Calf-skin  which  sold  as  high  as  $1.25  a 
pound  could  not  be  sold  for  fifteen  cents  a  pound. 

What  effect  is  this  crisis  going  to  have  on  the  agra 
rian  situation  in  America?  Perhaps  the  action  of  the 
Southern  cotton-growers  may  be  significant.  They 
have  decided  to  reduce  the  acreage  of  cotton  for  the 
season  of  1921,  so  that  the  prices  will  be  forced  high 
enough  to  assure  them  a  fair  margin  of  profit.  By 
controlling  the  fertilizer  market,  they  have  agreed  to 
refuse  fertilizer  to  any  cotton-^grower  who  will  not 


THE  GREATER  CRISIS  419 

abide  by  their  decision  stipulating  the  acreage  he  can 
plant.  This  is  a  drastic  step  and  economically  un 
sound  from  the  point  of  view  of  world  needs,  for  it 
is  safe  to  assume  that  the  world  needs  more  cotton  to 
day  than  ever  in  its  history.  Whether  the  farmers  as 
a  whole  will  retaliate  by  similar  combines  is  not  yet 
decided,  but  in  any  even  it  is  certain  that  the  present 
crisis  is  too  severe  for  the  farmer  not  to  take  steps  to 
ward  organizations  which  will  protect  his  interests. 

The  American  farmer  must  have  a  reasonable  return 
on  his  labor  and  capital  or  he  will  refuse  to  produce 
more  than  he  needs  for  his  own  consumption,  or  he 
may  leave  the  farm.  If  he  leaves,  his  place  will  be 
taken  by  people  who  can  meet  the  prevailing  prices  on 
account  of  their  lower  standard  of  living.  Unless  the 
American  farmer  can  be  assured  of  a  profit  which  will 
allow  him  to  improve  his  living  standards  correspond 
ingly  with  the  betterment  of  city  standards,  we  can 
expect  nothing  but  to  have  our  farms  turned  over  to 
Japanese,  Hindus,  and  Armenians,  whose  living  de 
mands  cannot  be  compared  with  those  of  Americans. 
If  it  is  necessary  for  the  farmers  to  combine  and  force 
up  their  prices  so  as  to  allow  them  the  profit  to  induce 
our  American  boys  to  remain  on  the  farm,  then  such 
combines  are  needed.  The  people  of  the  city  must 
realize  that  the  farmers  are  entitled  to  and  must  have 
this  profit  if  our  agrarian  crisis  is  to  be  safely  passed. 
There  is  sufficient  margin  between  the  wheat  price  paid 
to  the  farmer  and  the  price  of  a  loaf  of  bread  to  allow 
the  farmer  his  needed  increase  if  the  problem  of  mark 
ets  is  properly  handled. 

The  conference  of  the  National  Board  of  Farm  Or- 


_-7    vv    y:;H: 


420  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

ganizations  held  in  St.  Louis  during  September  com 
pleted  arrangements  for  a  national  system  of  coopera 
tive  and  financial  institutions  designed  to  rehabilitate 
the  great  industry  by  establishing  grain  handling 
centers  in  nine  large  cities,  thereby  eliminating  the 
middleman  and  unnecessary  speculation.  The  plan  is 
to  finance  these  centers  through  a  national  union  of 
farm  loan  associations.  It  is  only  through  such  or 
ganizations  as  these  that  the  farmer  can  hope  to  fortify 
his  position  against  marketing  conditions  over  which 
at  present  he  has  no  control. 


BOOK  V 

EXPERT  OPINIONS  ON  SOME  PROBLEMS 
OF  POLICY 


424  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

fer  certain  benefits  upon  him;  and  he  likewise  is  under 
obligation  to  the  group  for  the  benefits  received. 

The  tie  which  binds  one  to  a  group,  and  the  service 
rendered  by  the  group  will  naturally  influence  our 
theories  as  to  the  allegiance  to  be  required  of  the  in 
dividual  man  and  our  opinion  as  to  the  possibility  of 
terminating  the  allegiance  of  the  man  to  the  group. 

Happily,  most  of  us  do  not  care  to  be  released  from 
our  obligations  to  the  family.  In  some  lands,  as  in 
southwestern  China,  for  instance,  where  the  clan  or 
ganization  still  persists,  the  tie  that  binds  one  to  his  clan 
is  regarded  as  no  less  sacred  and  enduring  than  that 
which  unites  him  to  his  family.  In  some  countries,  too, 
the  relation  of  the  person  to  the  state  is  held  to  be  of  a 
similar  nature. 

In  modern  times,  however,  during  which  there  have 
been  large  movements  of  population  from  one  land  to 
another  and  in  which  new  states  have  been  created  out 
of  heterogeneous  elements,  coming  from  a  variety  of  races 
and  nationalities,  the  theory  of  allegiance  has  been 
greatly  modified,  and  the  possibility  of  expatriation  has 
been  generally,  though  not  universally,  recognized. 

The  doctrine  of  sovereignty  prevailing  in  any  state 
will  indicate  the  character  of  the  allegiance  which  that 
state  will  require  from  its  citizens  or  subjects.  Anciently, 
as  Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine  has  taught  us,  sovereignty 
was  regarded  as  personal  and  had  nothing  to  do  with 
geographical  boundaries.  The  people  of  a  tribe  were 
theoretically  of  one  blood,  and  no  matter  where  one  might 
travel,  even  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  his  allegiance  was 
still  due  to  the  tribe  and  its  chieftain.  He  could  no  more 
render  allegiance  to  a  tribe  among  whom  he  might  be 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       425 

sojourning  than  he  could  worship  the  ancestors  of  that 
tribe.  In  fact,  religion  and  patriotism  were  closely  in 
terwoven.  Only  by  being  adopted  into  the  alien  tribe 
could  he  give  allegiance  to  its  chief  or  worship  to  its 
gods.  To-day  we  call  this  adoption  "naturalization." 

This  primitive  conception  of  sovereignty  as  personal 
and  having  nothing  to  do  with  territorial  boundaries 
continued  to  influence  political  practice  both  in  the  Ro 
man  Empire  in  the  Western  world  and  in  its  counter 
part,  the  Chinese  Empire,  in  the  Far  East,  when  these 
great  empires  extended  their  dominion  over  distant 
lands  and  varying  races  and  creeds.  The  emperor  in 
each  case  was  the  sovereign  lord,  but,  this  being  once 
acknowledged,  the  subject  peoples  were  allowed  to  ob 
serve  their  ancient  customs,  practise  their  ancestral  re 
ligions,  and  enforce  their  inherited  code  of  laws.  So  it 
happened  that  Jews,  even  though  living  in  Egypt  or  in 
Greece,  were  permitted  to  form  self-governing  colonies, 
subject,  of  course,  to  the  supervision  of  the  Roman  au 
thorities,  but  within  these  limits  to  compel  their  fellow 
nationals  to  observe  the  Mosaic  code  of  the  Jews  and  to 
punish  those  who  violated  it.  So,  too,  in  China  up  to  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century  the  Manchus  were  gov 
erned  by  one  code  and  the  Chinese  by  another,  while  the 
Mohammedan  people  of  the  northwest  and  the  semi- 
civilized  tribes  of  the  southwest  had  their  head  men  who 
ruled  them  according  to  their  own  laws. 

The  modern  practice  of  extraterritoriality,  that  is  to 
say,  the  exercise  by  one  government  of  jurisdiction  over 
its  nationals  resident  in  the  territory  of  another  govern 
ment,  is  generally  regarded  as  dating  from  the  capit 
ulations  granted  by  Mohammed  II  in  the  fifteenth  cen- 


426  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tury,  but  while  this  may  be  the  first  recorded  formal  rec 
ognition  of  the  practice,  the  practice  itself  is  of  course 
much  older.  It  is  one  that  strikes  its  roots  into  a  far 
distant  past.  When  Mohammed  signed  the  capitulations, 
he  was  probably  not  aware  of  surrendering  any  portion 
of  his  sovereignty.  Christian  Europe  at  that  time  was 
not  in  a  position  to  make  any  demands  upon  the  vic 
torious  Turks  before  whose  arms  the  walls  of  Constanti 
nople  had  just  fallen.  Bearing  in  mind  the  primitive 
conception  of  sovereignty  as  personal  and  not  territorial, 
there  was  nothing  surprising  in  the  willingness  of  Mo 
hammed  to  allow  the  Christians  of  his  empire  to  observe 
their  ancestral  laws.  Even  before  the  fall  of  Constan 
tinople,  European  states  had  been  accustomed  to  appoint 
consuls  to  reside  in  certain  ports  of  the  Turkish  Empire, 
and  those  consuls  appear  to  have  exercised  jurisdiction 
over  their  nationals  engaged  in  commerce  with  the  Turks. 

The  conception  of  territorial  sovereignty,  in  fact,  is  a 
very  modern  one;  it  had  its  origin,  so  far  as  Europe  is 
concerned,  in  the  downfall  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  the 
rise  of  feudalism.  The  Emperor  of  Rome  claimed  a 
universal  sovereignty ;  the  kings,  princes,  and  nobles  who 
held  their  dominions  from  him  had  their  jurisdiction 
limited  to  the  territories  assigned  to  them,  and  not  made 
to  embrace  the  whole  of  a  particular  people.  When  the 
empire  fell,  these  kings  and  princes  continued  to  exercise 
their  jurisdiction  as  before,  within  the  boundaries  of 
their  provinces  and  idependent  of  any  over-lord.  Thus, 
as  Maine  has  shown,  men  became  accustomed  to  the  con 
ception  of  sovereignty  as  limited  by  geographical  boun 
daries. 

These  two  conceptions  of  sovereignty  have  continued 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       427 

to  exist  side  by  side.  The  practice  of  territorial  sov- 
eignty  is  only  slowly  crowding  out  the  older  custom. 
When  the  British  Parliament  in  1773  empowered  the 
King  to  erect  a  supreme  court  at  Calcutta,  the  British 
Crown  had  not  yet  obtained  the  sovereignty  of  the  soil. 
And  this  court  was  set  up  without  any  agreement  to  that 
effect  with  the  titular  sovereign  at  Delhi.  In  1788  the 
United  States,  a  new  nation,  untrammeled  by  precedent, 
nevertheless  asked  and  received  from  France  in  the 
treaty  of  that  year  an  agreement  providing  that  ' '  all  dif 
ferences  and  suits  between  citizens  of  the  United  States 
in  France  should  be  determined  by  the  consuls  and  vice- 
consuls  either  by  reference  to  arbitrators  or  by  summary 
judgment  without  costs." 

Hall,  in  his  "  Foreign  Jurisdiction  of  the  British 
Crown,"  says  that  "to  the  oriental  mind  a  personal  law 
is  much  more  familiar  than  a  territorial  law,"  but  it  is 
doubtful  if  it  was  ever  more  familiar  to  the  Oriental  than 
in  early  days  it  was  to  the  European.  Hall  had  refer 
ence  to  the  Hindu;  had  he  been  acquainted  with  the 
Chinese  mind,  he  might  not  have  made  so  sweeping  a 
generalization.  The  probabilities  are  that  the  Chinese, 
arrived  at  the  conception  of  territorial  sovereignty  be 
fore  the  people  of  the  West  did,  and  they  reached  it 
through  a  very  similar  experience,  the  weakening  of  im 
perial  control  and  the  rise  to  independence  of  states  that 
had  once  been  held  by  their  rulers  on  feudal  tenure. 
These  rulers  had  always  had  their  authority  limited  by 
territorial  boundaries,  and  in  their  relations  one  with  an 
other  after  attaining  independence  made  no  effort  to 
exercise  jurisdiction  over  their  subjects  after  such  sub 
jects  passed  within  the  boundaries  of  another  state. 


428  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

When  therefore  in  modern  times  the  European  made  his 
appearance  in  China,  the  Chinese  Government  insisted 
upon  the  exercise  of  jurisdiction  over  him  while  in  Chi 
nese  territory,  and  it  was  not  until  they  were  compelled 
by  defeat  in  war  that  they  consented  to  permit  Western 
powers  to  exercise  extraterritoriality  in  China.  At  that 
time  Europeans  themselves  had  no  fixed  and  definite 
theories  of  sovereignty  as  territorial.  Their  practice,  as 
in  the  case  of  the  British  court  in  India  and  in  that  of 
American  consular  jurisdiction  in  France,  was  decidedly 
inconsistent  with  the  acceptance  of  such  a  theory.  They 
had  of  course  the  conception  of  territorial  sovereignty, 
but  it  was  undeveloped,  and  was  confused  with  the  older 
notion  of  sovereignty  as  personal  or  national. 

A  compromise  of  these  two  principles  prevails  in  the 
world  to-day.  We  have  only  to  read  the  laws  of  various 
European  and  American  governments  in  regard  to  na 
tionality  to  see  that  this  is  so. 

In  so  far  as  extraterritoriality  is  concerned  there  is 
general  agreement.  It  cannot  be  exercised  except  by 
formal  provision  in  a  treaty  with  the  power  in  whose 
territories  such  jurisdiction  is  to  be  held.  In  fact,  ex 
traterritoriality,  except  that  form  of  it  included  in  dip- 
plomatic  privilege,  has  been  abandoned  by  the  powers  in 
all  countries  where  formerly  exercised  except  in  China 
and  Siam.  Turkey  at  the  beginning  of  the  World  War 
abrogated  the  capitulations,  but  the  Allied  powers  and 
the  United  States  have  never  agreed  to  that  action,  and 
the  treaty  of  peace  will  no  doubt  reestablish  extraterri 
toriality  there  for  the  Allies,  and  the  American  Govern 
ment  will  no  doubt  claim  the  same  privilege. 

But  while  the  formal  exercise  of  judicial  functions  in 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES      429 

the  territory  of  another  state  by  officers  of  the  favored 
power  has  been  abandoned  with  the  exceptions  noted, 
the  powers  of  the  world  still  endeavor  to  retain  a  moiety 
of  their  sovereignty  over  their  citizens  or  subjects  resi 
dent  in  a  foreign  country,  in  some  cases  even  over  per 
sons  born  in  the  foreign  country,  both  against  the  will  of 
the  persons  concerned  and  in  opposition  to  the  claims  of 
the  foreign  power  involved.  And  this  they  do  even  while 
claiming  jurisdiction  over  all  persons  born  or  natural 
ized  in  their  own  territories. 

I  have  said  that  expatriation  has  been  generally,  al 
though  not  universally,  acknowledged.  There  were  be 
fore  the  World  War  only  two  states  that  refused  to  ac 
knowledge  it.  These  were  Russia  and  Turkey.  Both 
held  to  the  old  theory  of  sovereignty  as  personal,  and  re 
garded  allegiance  as  perpetual.  They  considered  re 
nunciation  of  allegiance  liable  to  severe  punishment. 
These  were  both  backward  states,  but  one  of  the  most 
modern  of  states,  Switzerland,  also  holds  that  the  citizen 
of  a  Swiss  canton  cannot  be  deprived  of  his  citizenship 
even  though  he  should  become  naturalized  abroad  unless 
he  makes  an  express  request  of  the  Swiss  Government  in 
writing,  and  first  fulfils  all  his  obligations  as  a  Swiss 
citizen. 

A  curious  case  occurred  in  1897,  when  an  American 
citizen,  born  in  the  United  States  of  Swiss  ancestry,  paid 
a  visit  to  Switzerland,  and  was  held  by  the  Swiss  govern 
ment  to  be  liable  to  military  service.  After  considerable 
diplomatic  correspondence,  Schneider,  the  man  con 
cerned,  relieved  himself  of  further  annoyance  by  paying 
a  fine  and  making  a  formal  renunciation  of  all  claims 
against  the  canton  of  his  forefathers.  The  reason  given 


430  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

by  the  Swiss  authorities  for  the  claim  made  was  that  the 
Swiss  Constitution  provides  that  no  citizen  may  be  de 
prived  of  his  rights  in  his  canton  or  commune.  It  ap 
pears  that  every  such  citizen  in  his  old  age  or  in  dis 
tress  may  claim  aid  from  his  commune,  and  those  who 
go  abroad,  even  though  naturalized,  are  unwilling  to  sur 
render  this  right.  But  this  does  not  at  all  explain  the 
claim  against  a  man  born  in  the  United  States. 

The  law  of  France,  also,  in  its  original  form  was  based 
upon  the  doctrine  of  jus  sanguinis  and  still  retains  that 
for  the  most  part.  But  as  modified  in  1889,  it  embodies 
a  practice  which  is  based  upon  the  doctrine  of  jus  soli. 
It  claims  as  French  citizens  all  sons  of  Frenchmen  no 
matter  where  born,  and  also  as  French  all  born  in  France 
if  the  father  was  born  there,  and  if  the  non-French  father 
was  not  born  in  France,  the  son  is  still  claimed  as 
French ;  if  born  in  France,  he  is  resident  there  on  coming 
of  age  unless  he  then  disclaims  French  nationality  and 
proves  by  certificate  that  he  has  the  nationality  of  his 
father.  Moreover,  the  French  law  refuses  to  recognize 
as  valid  the  naturalization  of  a  Frenchman  in  another 
state  until  he  shall  have  fulfilled  his  military  duties  in 
France  or  been  released  from  such  obligation. 

The  law  of  the  United  States  holds  that  all  persons 
born  in  the  United  States  are  American  citizens,  but  also 
holds  that  children  of  citizens,  although  born  abroad,  are 
also  American  citizens  even  when  continuing  to  reside 
abroad  with  their  parents.  This  at  once  leads  to  con 
flict,  since  the  country  of  their  birth  and  the  United 
States  both  claim  their  allegiance.  This  conflict  arises 
not  only  over  foreign-born  children  of  American  paren 
tage,  but  also  over  American-born  children  of  foreign  or 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       131 

naturalized  parents,  if  the  parents  have  come  from  coun 
tries  that  claim  the  allegiance  of  such  children.  In  the 
case  of  the  foreign-born  child  of  American  parents,  how 
ever,  the  courts  have  recognized  the  right  of  such  a  child 
on  coming  of  age  to  elect  his  citizenship,  either  that  of 
his  father  or  that  of  the  country  of  his  birth. 

Conflict  has  more  often  arisen  over  naturalized  citi 
zens  of  the  United  States  whose  allegiance  is  still  claimed 
by  the  country  of  their  birth.  In  many  cases  this  con 
flict  has  been  avoided  by  treaties  of  naturalization,  in 
which  it  is  provided  that  residence  of  naturalized  citizens 
in  the  United  States  continuously  for  five  years  estab 
lished  American  citizenship,  but  with  the  reservation 
that,  if  military  duty  has  not  been  performed  before 
emigration  or  if  crime  has  been  committed  before  emi 
gration,  the  person  guilty  of  such  offenses  remains  liable 
to  trial  and  punishment  in  the  country  of  his  birth  un 
less  protected  by  a  statute  of  limitation  effective  in  that 
country. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  conflict  is  not  peculiar  to  our 
relations  with  the  Orient;  but  the  fact  that  Orientals 
are  ineligible  to  naturalization  makes  the  problem  of 
our  relations  with  the  Far  East  more  difficult. 

The  Chinese  law  of  citizenship  adopted  in  1912  is  very 
similar  to  our  own.  It  is  indeed  based  upon  the  doctrine 
prevalent  in  the  West,  and  is  an  entirely  new  departure 
for  China.  It  provides  for  the  naturalization  of  for 
eigners  and  defines  the  conditions  under  which  a  Chinese 
citizen  may  expatriate  himself.  Just  as  the  American 
law  claims  the  foreign-born  children  of  American  parents 
as  American  citizens,  so  the  Chinese  law  claims  as  Chi 
nese  citizens  the  foreign-born  children  of  Chinese  par- 


432  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

ents  the  Chinese  law  will  permit  such  a  child  to  choose 
American  citizenship,  but  he  must  first  free  himself  from 
any  obligations  to  serve  in  the  army  or  navy  of  China. 
This  provision  is  copied  from  the  laws  of  Japan,  France, 
and  various  other  countries.  It  should  be  noted,  how 
ever,  that  China  has  not  yet  established  universal  mili 
tary  service,  and  has  thus  far  avoided  any  attempt  to 
compel  American-born  Chinese  to  serve  in  the  Chinese 
Army  or  Navy. 

The  Chinese  law  pe-rmits  Americans  to  be  naturalized 
in  China.  But  our  courts  have  decided  that  no  for 
eigners  other  than  whites  and  blacks  are  eligible  to  citi 
zenship  by  naturalization  in  the  United  States.  This 
provision  of  our  laws  is  the  source  of  much  ill  feeling  in 
China  and  Japan  toward  the  United  States.  It  has  re 
sulted,  too,  in  the  formation  within  the  body  of  the 
American  people  of  a  considerable  element  which  cannot 
be  assimilated  and  which  must  ever  remain  subject  to  a 
foreign  power  and  owing  allegiance  abroad.  Formerly 
the  Chinese  Government  took  little  or  no  interest  in  its 
subjects  living  abroad,  but  this  attitude  has  changed 
since  the  establishment  of  the  republic.  The  Manchu 
code  maintained  strict  provisions  regarding  the  move 
ments  of  the  members  of  the  Manchu,  Mongol,  and  Chi 
nese  banner  corps,  because  these  were  all  bound  to  ren 
der  military  service.  They  could  not  change  their  resi 
dence,  much  less  go  abroad  without  special  permission, 
but  the  ordinary  Chinese  subjects  traveled  far  and  wide 
without  question.  For  two  or  three  hundred  years  the 
Government  made  no  effort  to  protect  them,  but  after  the 
Burlingame  mission  went  abroad,  ministers  and  consuls 
were  appointed. 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       433 

Now,  since  China  has  become  a  republic,  and  the  Chi 
nese  people  instead  of  the  Manchus  control  the  Govern 
ment,  the  interest  in  the  Chinese  resident  abroad  is  so 
great  that  they  are  permitted  to  send  representatives  to 
sit  in  the  parliament  in  Peking.  This  treatment  nat 
urally  increases  the  loyalty  of  the  Chinese  in  the  United 
States  to  the  Republic  of  China,  and  since  they  are  not 
permitted,  unless  born  here,  to  become  American  citizens, 
this  feeling  is  quite  justified. 

The  strength  of  the  family  tie  in  China  also  tends  to 
bind  the  wandering  members  of  the  race  back  to  their 
ancestral  community.  In  China  the  family,  not  the  per 
son,  is  the  social  unit.  The  father  is  an  autocrat ;  under 
the  old  regime  he  had  power  of  life  and  death  over  his 
family.  Ancestor  worship  strengthened  the  reverence  of 
the  young  for  their  seniors,  and  bound  related  families 
closely  together  in  the  membership  of  the  clan.  The  clan 
exercises  authority  over  its  members  through  the  clan 
council,  in  which  each  head  of  a  family  has  a  voice.  The 
clan  thus  brings  to  trial  any  member  disloyal  to  its  in 
terests,  and  settles  questions  of  property  and  other  dis 
putes  among  its  members.  It  has  even  been  known  to 
disinherit  members  who  fall  under  its  condemnation  and 
even  to  put  them  to  death. 

The  clan  loyalty,  however,  has  never  been  a  source  of 
international  trouble.  The  Chinese  in  America  have 
never  intrigued  against  the  American  Government. 
Wherever  they  have  gone,  as  a  rule  they  have  been  law- 
abiding  and  loyal  to  the  Government  whose  protection 
they  have  enjoyed.  One  thing  that  has  aided  in  this  has 
been  the  fact  that  most  of  the  Chinese  in  the  United 
States  have  come  from  southern  China,  where  the  former 


434  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

rulers  of  China  were  cordially  disliked.  The  only  po 
litical  offenses  of  which  they  have  been  guilty  have  been 
connected  with  plots  for  the  overthrow  of  the  Manchu 
monarchy,  and  now  that  this  has  been  accomplished  and 
a  republic  established,  their  sympathy  with  American  in 
stitutions  is  pronounced.  This  does  not  mean  that  the 
Chinese  in  the  United  States  approve  of  American  policy 
in  the  exclusion  of  their  fellow-countrymen  nor  of  the 
decision  of  our  courts  denying  Chinese  the  right  of 
naturalization. 

"We  must  not  forget  that  the  Chinese  came  here  at  the 
request  of  Americans  and  at  a  time  when  their  labor  was 
greatly  needed  and  highly  appreciated. 

Neither  should  we  forget  that  the  early  Chinese  who 
desired  naturalization  were  granted  it.  At  that  time 
nobody  thought  of  any  other  course  as  desirable  or  pos 
sible.  It  was  only  after  Chinese  immigration  had  in 
creased  so  greatly  as  to  create  race  feeling  and  threaten 
economic  difficulties  that  the  courts  decided  that  the 
American  Constitution  applied  only  to  whites  and  blacks, 
and  could  not  be  appealed  to  in  behalf  of  men  of  the  yel 
low  race. 

The  method  adopted  by  our  Government  to  exclude 
Chinese  immigration  is,  however,  open  to  criticism.  Af 
ter  inducing  the  Chinese  Government  to  agree  to  the  re 
striction  of  Chinese  immigration  upon  condition  that  it 
should  never  be  absolutely  prohibited,  it  does  seem  un 
worthy  of  us  that  we  did  absolutely  prohibit  such  immi 
gration  arbitrarily  before  we  had  denounced  or  amended 
the  treaty.  This  act,  however,  was  subsequently  regu 
larized  by  the  treaty  of  1896.  Moreover,  we  might  to 
day  be  in  a  better  position  as  regards  undesirable  im- 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES      435 

migration  had  we  enacted  a  law  less  specific.  Thus  we 
might  have  avoided  offense  to  Chinese  feelings  given  by 
mentioning  them  by  name.  And  we  might  have  based 
the  legislation  upon  some  general  principle  by  which  it 
could  be  seen  that  we  were  aiming  at  the  protection  of  our 
own  people  and  standards. 

A  law  properly  drawn  at  that  time  would  have  made 
impossible  the  conditions  which  to-day  give  much  oc 
casion  for  alarms.  But  the  past  cannot  be  undone,  and 
we  are  no  longer  disturbed  by  Chinese  immigration;  it 
has  been  effectually  stopped. 

In  so  far  as  the  American-born  Chinese  are  concerned, 
we  have  no  cause  for  complaint.  They  are  as  thoroughly 
Americanized  as  the  American-born  children  of  any  for 
eigners  that  have  come  to  our  shores.  They  speak  purer 
English  than  most  children  of  immigrants;  they  accept 
enthusiastically  American  social  and  political  ideals; 
they  take  high  rank  in  our  educational  institutions;  they 
take  instinctively  to  American  sports,  and  they  are  thor 
oughly  loyal  to  the  flag  and  among  the  foremost  to  enlist 
in  its  defense.  Their  right  to  citizenship  can  not  be  de 
nied  ;  the  courts  have  passed  upon  that  question  repeat 
edly,  and  have  uniformly  decided  in  favor  of  the 
American  citizenship  of  such  Chinese.  The  greatest 
number  of  Chinese  at  any  one  time  in  the  United  States 
was  107,488.  The  restrictions  upon  Chinese  immigra 
tion  have  reduced  that  number  to  71,531.  This  is  the 
number  in  the  recent  census.  Of  these  one  third,  per 
haps,  are  American  born,  and  are  therefore  American 
citizens.  There  ought  not  to  be  any  difficulty  in  the 
assimilation  of  such  a  small  group. 

As  for  the  Japanese,  there  is  no  reason  whether  on 


436  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

racial  or  economic  grounds  why  they  should  not  receive 
exactly  the  same  treatment  as  the  Chinese.  True,  they 
are  not  racially  identical  with  the  Chinese,  but  they  are 
not  white  and  they  are  not  black,  and  therefore  they  are 
not  eligible  to  naturalization  under  the  decisions  of  our 
courts.  Economically  they  fall  within  the  same  cate 
gory  as  the  Chinese.  Their  standard  of  living  is  about 
the  same  as  that  of  the  Chinese.  If  there  is  any  differ 
ence  in  the  wage  scale,  it  is  so  slight  that  when  compari 
son  is  made  with  that  of  the  white  laborer  it  is  not  worth 
considering.  Yet  Japanese  laws  exclude  the  Chinese  la 
borer  from  Japan.  That  being  so,  we  certainly  ought  to 
be  permitted  to  exclude  Japanese  laborers  from  our  coun 
try  without  meriting  serious  criticism  from  Japan.  The 
Japanese  Government  understands  this  perfectly,  and 
therefore  has  undertaken  voluntarily  to  refuse  passports 
to  laborers  seeking  to  come  to  the  United  States.  But 
they  do  not  class  farmers  and  gardeners  as  laborers,  and 
we  are  therefore  receiving  a  great  many  immigrants  of 
this  sort  who  are  cultivating  much  of  the  agricultural 
land  of  this  State. 

The  Japanese  law  of  citizenship  is  substantially  like 
our  own.  A  child  is  Japanese  if  its  father  at  the  time  of 
conception  was  a  Japanese  subject.  This  is  held  no  mat 
ter  where  the  child  may  be  born.  As  for  expatriation, 
the  law  of  Japan  is  that  "if  a  child  who  is  a  Japanese 
subject  acquires  by  acknowledgment  a  foreign  nation 
ality,  he  loses  his  Japanese  nationality."  Until  the  re 
cent  revision  of  this  law,  the  next  paragraph  qualified 
the  statement  by  adding:  "notwithstanding  the  provi 
sions  of  the  preceding  five  articles,  a  male  person  of  the 
age  of  seventeen  years  or  upwards  loses  his  Japanese 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES      437 

nationality  only  if  lie  has  already  performed  his  service 
in  the  army  or  navy  or  is  not  bound  to  perform  such 
service."  Military  service  in  Japan  is  universal,  but  a 
child  who  is  the  only  son  of  a  parent  over  sixty  years  of 
age  who  is  dependent  upon  such  son  for  support  is  ex 
empt  from  the  requirement  to  serve  in  the  army  or  navy. 
The  recent  revision  of  the  law  provides  that,  if  the  par 
ents  or  guardians  of  a  Japanese  child  living  abroad  shall 
before  the  child  reaches  the  age  of  fifteen  years  declare 
that  such  child  is  to  be  a  citizen  of  the  state  in  which  he 
was  born,  that  child,  upon  application  made,  may  be  ex 
empted  from  the  obligation  to  perform  military  service. 
This  is  a  great  improvement  over  the  law  as  it  has  ex 
isted  and  been  enforced  until  recently.  Still,  it  leaves 
every  child  born  in  the  LTnited  States  of  Japanese  parents 
involved  in  the  obligations  of  a  dual  citizenship  until  the 
election  is  made  and  exemption  granted.  And  if  the 
choice  of  American  citizenship  is  not  made  before  the 
age  of  fifteen  years  is  reached,  the  boy  on  reaching  the 
age  of  seventeen  is  liable  to  service  in  the  Japanese  army 
or  navy  and  is  expected  to  begin  such  sen-ice  at  the  age 
of  twenty  years.  There  are  said  to  be  five  thousand 
American-born  Japanese  now  in  Japan,  presumably  be 
ing  educated  and  performing  their  military  duty.  Very 
few  applications  for  exemptions  from  the  obligations  to 
give  military  service  appear  to  have  been  made  on  the 
ground  that  the  applicant  was  to  become  an  American 
citizen. 

Every  male  subject  of  Japan  is  liable  to  military  serv 
ice  from  seventeen  to  thirty-seven  years  of  age.  If  a  boy 
enters  the  infantry,  he  is  bound  to  serve  in  the  active 
army  for  two  years ;  in  any  other  branch  of  the  service  for 


438  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

three  years.  He  is  then  placed  in  the  reserve  for  four 
years  and  four  months,  and  following  that  period  is  en 
rolled  in  the  depot  service,  or  second  reserve,  for  ten 
years,  and  subsequently  in  the  home  defence  for  two 
years  and  eight  months.  A  Japanese  living  abroad  may 
obtain  temporary  exemption  from  service,  but  this  must 
be  renewed  from  year  to  year,  and  does  not  confer  the 
privilege  of  expatriation.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  it  is 
the  militaristic  policy  of  the  nation,  the  demand  for  men 
to  fill  the  army  and  navy,  that  makes  the  conflicting 
claims  as  to  citizenship  a  matter  of  so  much  importance 
to  Japan,  just  as  it  is  t>o  France,  Switzerland,  and  various 
European  countries.  American-born  Japanese,  then, 
whose  parents  or  guardians  have  not  asked  exemption  for 
them  from  military  service  on  the  ground  of  their 
American  citizenship  remain  all  their  lives,  if  they  pre 
serve  their  domicile  in  the  United  States,  possessed  of  a 
dual  nationalty.  The  American  Government  may  call 
upon  them  for  service  in  the  American  army,  and  Japan 
may  summon  them  to  the  Japanese  colors,  so  long  as  they 
are  under  thirty-seven  years  of  age. 

This  question  of  a  dual  allegiance  becomes  of  consid 
erable  importance  when  viewed  in  connection  with  the 
provisions  of  the  land  laws  of  California.  These  laws 
forbid  the  ownership  of  land  to  aliens  who  are  not  eligible 
to  naturalization.  Yet  here  are  children  owning  land  as 
American  citizens  by  birth  who  may  nevertheless  be  by 
the  claim  of  Japan  and  by  their  own  choice  Japanese  sub 
jects.  The  Japanese  Government,  moreover,  through  the 
Japanese  Association,  apparently  organized  for  this  pur 
pose,  is  doing  all  that  it  can  to  retain  the  allegiance  of 
these  children  by  so  educating  them  in  Japanese  schools 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       439 

as  to  cause  them  to  prefer  Japanese  nationality.  Here 
is  a  grave  error  of  policy  to  which  too  little  attention  has 
been  paid.  It  does  not  seem  consistent  for  the  Japanese 
Government  to  insist  upon  the  right  of  Japanese  to  hold 
land  in  the  name  of  an  American-born  child  and  at  the 
same  time  to  attempt  to  retain  the  allegiance  of  that  child 
as  a  Japanese  subject. 

We  must  reach  a  clear  understanding  in  regard  to 
these  questions.  The  American  Government  ought  to  re 
quire  such  children  of  alien  parentage  to  make  choice  at 
a  proper  age  of  the  nationality  which  they  mean  to  bear, 
and  the  two  governments  might  enter  into  a  convention 
to  determine  the  conditions  under  which  the  choice  shall 
be  made  and  agree  together  to  respect  the  choice.  The 
State  of  California  might  very  well,  too,  so  modify  the 
present  law  as  to  forbid  the  holding  of  agricultural  land 
in  the  names  of  children  of  aliens  ineligible  to  citizenship 
until  choice  of  American  citizenship  for  such  children 
shall  have  been  made  and  assent  to  that  choice  given  by 
the  Government  of  Japan.  Even  such  a  modification  of 
the  law  would  not  be  entirely  satisfactory  so  long  as  the 
present  method  of  educating  Japanese  children  in  the 
United  States  continues.  Furthermore,  we  must  not  for 
get  that  even  after  the  American  citizenship  of  a  Japa 
nese  child  is  acknowledged,  he  becomes  a  Japanese  sub 
ject  at  once  without  formality  upon  his  acquiring  a  domi 
cile  in  Japan.  That  is  the  Japanese  law. 

The  strength  of  the  family  tie  greatly  aids  the  Japanese 
Government  in  its  efforts  to  hold  the  allegiance  of  for 
eign-born  Japanese  children.  Prior  to  the  revolution  of 
1868,  by  which  the  mikado  was  nominally  restored  to  di 
rect  control  of  the  empire,  the  civilization  of  Japan  was 


440  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

almost  wholly  derived  from  China.  The  solidarity  of  the 
family,  therefore,  was  almost  as  marked  in  Japan  as  in 
China.  The  strength  of  the  family  tie  is  still  striking. 

Individualistic  teachings  appear  to  have  found  less 
ready  acceptance  in  Japan  than  in  China.  But  the  au 
thority  of  the  family  has  never  taken  precedence  of  that 
of  the  state,  as  is  often  the  case  in  China,  where  the  clans 
sometimes  oppose  and  triumph  over  the  local  representa 
tives  of  the  Central  Government.  The  loyalty  of  the 
Japanese  to  his  Government  stands  above  all  else.  That 
is  his  religion. 

This  is  due  in  part  perhaps  to  the  spirit  of  feudalism, 
which  survived  in  Japan  until  1871.  In  China  it  was 
overthrown  221  B.  c.  The  samurai  of  Japan  were  profes 
sional  soldiers.  In  their  courage  and  their  loyalty  to 
their  feudal  lords  they  resembled  the  knights  of  the  Mid 
dle  Ages  in  Europe.  When  the  daimyos,  or  feudal  lords, 
voluntarily  surrendered  their  lands  and  powers  into  the 
hands  of  the  emperor,  the  samurai  became  subject  to  but 
one  authority,  that  of  the  emperor,  whom  they  had  al 
ways  worshiped.  The  loyalty  to  the  emperor  is  just  as 
marked  as  that  which  formerly  they  gave  to  their  daim 
yos.  The  Japanese,  moreover,  are  a  small,  compact  na 
tion  of  one  language  and  possessing  common  ideals.  The 
masses  of  the  people  prior  to  the  restoration  were  serfs 
and  slaves.  Since  the  restoration  they  still  show  to 
ward  their  rulers  the  same  submissiveness  as  before.  All 
this  tends  to  preserve  the  solidarity  of  the  Japanese  not 
only  at  home,  but  even  when  they  go  abroad.  There  are 
exceptions,  of  course.  Democratic  ideas  are  making  slow 
progress  even  in  Japan,  but  for  the  most  part  the  Japa 
nese  are  not  only  loyal  to  the  Imperial  Government, 


1 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       441 

which  is  to  be  expected,  but  they  respond  promptly  to  the 
guidance  of  the  official  representatives  of  their  Govern 
ment  in  matters  where  they  are  free  to  act  for  themselves, 
and  show  equal  readiness  to  submit  to  the  authority  of 
parents  and  family  councils,  which,  touching  matters 
which  the  Government  interests  itself  in,  is  likely  to  rein 
force  the  official  policy.  We  ought  not  then  to  expect 
American-born  Japanese  who  grow  up  in  a  Japanese 
environment,  and  who  have  their  lives  shaped  by  official 
and  parental  influences,  to  be  anything  else  than  Japa 
nese  in  feeling  and  conduct. 

The  natural  tendency  to  cling  to  the  nationality  of 
their  ancestors  is  reinforced,  moreover,  by  the  attitude  of 
their  American  neighbors,  so  often  hostile  to  them. 
When  the  parents  are  denied  American  citizenship,  the 
children  cannot  be  expected  to  be  enthusiastically 
American.  When  the  Imperial  Japanese  Government 
claims  them  as  Japanese  subjects  despite  their  birth  in 
the  United  States,  they  are  apt  to  accept  that  status  and 
give  a  ready  allegiance  to  the  Japanese  Government. 

The  Japanese  Government  follows  its  emigrating  sub 
jects  with  paternal  care  and  jealously  guards  their  in 
terests.  This  is  natural  and  within  certain  limits  it  is 
right ;  but  it  ought  not  to  go  any  further  than  insistence 
upon  the  fulfilment  of  treaty  obligations.  Unfortu 
nately,  the  emigration  program  of  the  Japanese  Govern 
ment  in  some  countries  has  been  closely  associated  with 
its  program  for  economic  and  political  control  of  those 
countries,  and  this  has  caused  dislike  of  the  immigrants 
in  those  countries  and  created  suspicion  elsewhere.  In 
Korea,  Manchuria,  and  Siberia  we  have  seen  the  effects 
of  this  unhappy  combination.  Military  occupation  is 


442  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

used  to  further  commercial  exploitation.  Advantages 
thus  gained  are  secured  by  discriminatory  legislation, 
and  the  immigrant  becomes  an  excuse  for  gradual  en 
croachment  upon  the  sovereignty  of  the  ruling  power. 
Somewhat  similar  methods  are  being  employed  in  Shan 
tung.  It  is  quite  true  that  none  of  these  things  have 
been  done  in  American  territory,  but  the  spirit  which 
prompts  the  use  of  such  methods  in  one  place  creates 
distrust  elsewhere,  and  the  knowledge  tfrat  such  an  ag 
gressive  spirit  and  policy  exists  serves  to  aggravate  the 
growing  feeling  that  it  is  undesirable  to  have  located  on 
:the  Pacific  coast  of  the  United  States  a  colony  of  aliens, 
most  of  whom  are  denied  the  privilege  of  becoming  citi 
zens  and  all  of  whom  are  ardently  loyal  to  a  foreign 
power,  ruled  by  an  ambitious  oligarchy,  inspired  with  the 
spirit  of  aggression  which  has  already  manifested  itself 
in  the  Far  East. 

In  vain  do  the  paid  propagandists  of  Japan  deny  the 
existence  of  a  militaristic  spirit  in  that  empire.  Their 
own  liberal-minded  countrymen  affirm  it.  A  few  days 
ago  in  the  Imperial  Diet  at  Tokio  the  following  statement 
was  made  by  Mr.  Ozaki,  formerly  mayor  of  Tokio,  and 
later  minister  of  justice  in  the  Okuma  cabinet : 

"It  is  only  by  the  overthrow  of  militarism  that  the 
good  repute  of  Japan  can  be  restored  in  the  world  to  its 
former  lustre."  Again  he  asserted:  "The  introduction 
of  a  budget  of  which  one  third  is  devoted  to  a  bloated  in 
crease  of  armaments  is  the  height  of  absurdity."  Fur 
thermore  he  said:  "Japan  will  never  win  her  rightful 
place  among  the  nations  until  she  throws  off  the  tyranny 
of  the  military  clique.  World  suspicion  has  turned 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       443 

against  us  because  the  world  sees  in  Japan  an  aggressive 
and  militaristic  country/' 

The  "Osaka  Asahi,"  one  of  the  most  influential  jour 
nals  in  Japan,  recently  published  a  leader  which  was 
translated  and  published  in  the  "  Japan  Advertiser''  of 
June  6th  last.  (Mr.  J.  0.  P.  Bland  had  made  certain 
statements  regarding  Japan  to  which  the  article  refers.) 

1  "  Bland  is  right  in  saying  that  the  reason  why  Japan  can 
not  obtain  a  perfect  understanding  with  foreign  coun 
tries  is  that  decision  on  diplomatic  policy  rests  not  with 

I  a  responsible  government  but  with  certain  irresponsible 
influences,  i.  e.,  the  militarists.  .  .  .  We  agree  that  unless 
the  irresponsible  forces  are  superseded  by  a  responsible 
government  no  satisfactory  renewal  of  the  alliance 
(Anglo- Japanese)  can  be  hoped  for."  The  " Asahi" 

f  continues:  " There  are  two  or  three  foreign  offices  in 
Tokio,"  that  is,  these  matters  are  not  left  as  they  should 
be  to  the  ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs.  "The  Diplomatic 
Advisory  Council  of  Terauchi,"  he  asserts,  "still  con 
tinues  to  function,  notwithstanding  that  Hara,  a  sup 
posed  liberal,  is  Premier."  By  which  Mr.  Bland  means 
that  the  militarists  are  still  in  control. 

In  January  last  the  "Yomiura"  published  an  article 
saying  that  the  militarists  in  Japan  were  disturbing  and 
disjointing  the  Government's  policy  in  China.  About 
the  same  time  the  Tokio  "Asahi,"  discussing  the  denial 
of  General  Tanaka  that  the  military  were  interfering 
with  diplomatic  affairs,  said:  "What  of  our  diplomacy 
with  China  ?  Has  it  never  happened  that  while  the  For 
eign  Office  was  making  arrangements  in  accordance  with 
a  definite  policy,  the  Japanese  military  officers  in  China 


444  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

were  taking  a  different  course  and  showing  much  ac 
tivity  behind  the  scenes  ? ' '  This  paper  also  charged  that 
such  interference  had  been  going  on  in  the  United  States 
and  in  European  capitals,  the  military  and  naval  at 
taches  working  at  cross  purposes  with  the  embassies. 

Such  evidence  can  be  greatly  multiplied,  but  it  is  not 
necessary  to  present  more.  All  students  of  Far-Eastern 
affairs  know  that  the  Government  of  Japan  is  an  oli 
garchy.  Ever  since  the  restoration  of  the  mikado  a  small 
group  of  statesmen  have  been  in  control.  The  Toku- 
gawa  Clan  lost  its  power  when  the  Shogunate  was  over 
thrown,  but  the  so-called  restoration  was  more  properly 
speaking  the  substitution  of  the  rule  of  four  clans  for 
that  of  one.  And  these  four  clans  have  been  controlled 
by  two,  Choshu  and  Satsuma.  Choshu  since  that  time 
has  had  control  of  the  army,  and  Satsuma  of  the  navy. 
And  when  the  constitution  was  promulgated  in  1889  it 
was  found  to  contain  a  clause  which  makes  it  obligatory 
that  an  officer  of  the  army  shall  be  minister  of  war,  and 
an  officer  of  the  navy  minister  of  marine. 

In  this  way  it  has  remained  possible  through  more  than 
thirty  years  for  the  two  clans,  Choshu  and  Satsuma,  to 
prevent  the  formation  of  a  cabinet  of  which  they  did  not 
approve.  And  they  still  wield  that  power,  no  matter 
what  the  name  of  the  party  may  be  to  which  the  premier 
may  belong.  Militarists  thus  shape  the  policies  of  the 
Government. 

The  aggressive  policy  of  these  militarists  is  not  recent. 
It  is  as  old  as  the  restoration,  conceived  and  advocated 
at  that  time  by  the  leaders  of  the  restoration.  It  was 
that  remarkable  man,  Yoshida  Shoin,  the  teacher  of  Ito, 
Kido,  Inouye,  Shinagawa,  and  others  who  rose  to  great 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       445 

prominence  in  after  years — it  was  this  man  who  gave  ut 
terance  in  1854  to  the  program  of  foreign  conquest  which 
has  been  steadily  followed  by  Japan  ever  since.  Mr. 
Tokutomi,  the  editor  of  the  "Kobumin  Shimbun,"  who 
i  wrote  the  life  of  Hoshida,  says  that  he  was  not  the  first 
to  propose  such  a  program,  but  he  was  undoubtedly  the 
man  who  gave  it  currency  and  who  implanted  the  ambi 
tion  to  realize  it  in  the  hearts  of  the  young  men  who  af 
terward  shaped  the  destinies  of  Japan.  While  he  was  in 
prison  for  a  political  offense  he  wrote  his  book,  "Ryu- 
kon  Roku, ' '  in  which  he  said : 

"Our  great  obligation  to-day  is  to  readjust  the  administration 
of  the  country  and  by  diplomacy  to  develop  friendly  relations 
with  some  of  the  most  important  foreign  countries;  therefore 
we  must  know  the  conditions  existing-  in  foreign  countries. 
According  to  the  tendency  of  the  times  I  believe  there  should  be 
in  the  future  an  alliance  between  the  five  great  continents  and 
in  this  way  avoid  great  conflicts.  The  chief  of  this  great  con 
federation  will  naturally  be  England  or  Russia,  but  I  believe 
it  should  be  Russia,  as  England  is  too  avaricious.  Russia  is 
strong  and  strict  and  therefore  Russia  will  probably  make  the 
best  reputation.  Japan,  in  order  to  maintain  her  independence, 
must  have  Korea  and  part  of  Manchuria  and  also  should  have 
territories  in  South  America  and  India.  This  will  be  very  dif 
ficult,  however,  as  we  are  not  strong  enough  and  for  this  reason 
we  should  make  an  alliance  with  Russia,  because  she  is  our 
neighbor.  If  we  depend  upon  Russia  she  will  feel  friendly 
toward  us.  Until  this  is  accomplished  it  would  be  well  to  seek 
the  sympathy  of  America  and  get  her  help  in  resisting  the 
aggression  of  England.  In  carrying  out  this  imperial  policy 
we  must  look  upon  America  as  our  eastern  ally  and  Russia  as 
our  brother  and  Europe  as  our  territory.  And  the  first  im 
portant  thing  is  to  take  some  territory  in  the  nearest  countries." 


446  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

It  is  significant  that  his  pupil  Ito  also  preferred  a  Rus 
sian  to  a  British  alliance.  Yoshida  also  advocated  the 
annexation  of  the  Loochoos  and  the  Kurile  Islands  and 
the  taking  of  Kamchatka.  Mr.  Tokutomi  calls  attention 
to  the  fact  that  in  a  little  more  than  sixty  years  this 
program  had  been  nearly  completed. 

It  was  the  policy  of  the  restoration  leaders  to  put  an 
end  to  internecine  strife,  to  the  civil  war  so  continuously 
waged  between  the  clans,  by  giving  the  warlike  samurai 
plenty  of  occupation  in  wars  of  foreign  conquest.  An  at 
tempt  was  made  to  begin  the  program  while  Ito  was 
abroad  with  his  commission  trying  to  get  a  revision  of 
the  treaties  which  had  unjustly  bound  Japan  to  a  low 
tariff  on  foreign  imports.  He  failed  in  this,  but  he  still 
had  enough  influence  to  stop  a  movement  which  at  that 
time  (1873)  would  have  been  foolish  in  the  extreme. 
He  pointed  out  that  Japan  had  no  modern  army  or  mod 
ern  equipment  and  would  be  unable  to  meet  Western  foes 
if  they  should  take  a  hand  in  the  game.  He  advocated  a 
period  of  preparation.  He  drew  up  a  constitution 
modeled  upon  that  of  Prussia,  which  gives  the  form,  but 
not  the  substance,  of  legislative  power  to  the  representa 
tives  of  the  people.  He  replaced  French  officers  with 
German  for  the  instruction  of  the  army,  and  had  that 
force  built  up  and  drilled  on  the  German  plan.  Then  in 
1894,  when  the  liberals  of  Japan  began  to  clamor  for  a 
really  representative  government,  he  silenced  all  opposi 
tion  to  the  rule  of  the  oligarchy  by  picking  a  quarrel  with 
China  and  plunging  the  country  into  a  foreign  war. 
From  that  time  to  this  Japan  has  gone  from  strength  to 
strength,  and  because  of  her  victories  has  won  a  place 
among  the  five  great  powers  of  the  world. 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES      447 

Drunk  with  success,  these  militarists  are  now  planning 
for  the  hegemony  of  Asia.  This  ambition  has  given  birth 
to  the  Pan-Asian  movement,  whose  watchword  is  "Asia 
for  the  Asiatics,  with  Japan  in  the  lead."  The  former 
secretary  of  the  Japanese  legation  at  Peking,  who  tried 
to  convince  the  Chinese  officials  there  that  the  Twenty- 
one  Demands  of  1915  were  really  made  in  the  interest  of 
the  Chinese,  explained  that  they  were  a  part  of  the  Pan- 
Asian  movement,  the  first  step  in  a  great  plan  to  unite 
Japanese  and  Chinese  interests  with  "a  view  to  the  ulti 
mate  amalgamation  of  all  Asiatic  interests,  so  that  from 
Japan  to  Egypt  there  should  be  built  up  a  great  Asiatic 
confederation  for  the  purpose  of  ousting  the  white  man." 
The  movement  is  well-known  and  finds  much  favor  in 
Japan  and  also  in  China  to  some  extent.  The  "Japan 
Magazine,"  shortly  after  the  making  of  the  proposal  just 
quoted,  published  an  article  showing  that  the  white  man 
is  unsuited  to  life  in  the  tropics.  It  closed  with  this 
statement:  "The  Japanese  is  a  yellow  man;  he  has  the 
warm  blood  of  the  South ;  his  temperature  is  normally  be 
low  that  of  the  European,  and  the  cry  of  Southward  Ho ! 
is  most  natural  to  him.  Japan  not  Europe  or  America  is 
to  be  supreme  in  Asia."  The  Japanese  secretary  men 
tioned  though  that  the  Asiatic  confederation  might  be 
brought  about  in  seven  years;  that  is,  by  1922.  He 
pointed  to  a  map  and  said  that  Australia  also  was  a  ter 
ritory  that  "Asiatics  should  dominate." 

The  Japanese  Government  does  not  of  course  openly 
avow  any  such  ambition,  but  several  prominent  states 
men  and  publicists  have  indorsed  such  a  program.  A 
writer  in  the  "Chuo  Koron"  advocated  war  to  expand 
the  empire  and  relieve  the  pressure  of  population.  "It 


448 


MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 


is  all  very  well,"  he  said,  "for  countries  like  England 
and  America  to  talk  about  peace,  but  what  Japan  most 
needs  is  to  break  the  bonds  that  restrict  her  expansion 
and  make  the  Pacific  the  centre  of  her  activities  and  es 
tablish  her  own  colonies  as  vents  for  emigration."  The 
"Yomiuri"  refused  to  blame  German  ambitions,  saying, 
"A  nation  should  always  look  to  its  own  interests  and,  if 
possible,  should  ever  cultivate  a  determination  to  con 
quer  the  world."  Here  we  see  the  German  influence, 
"the  will  to  victory." 

A  former  minister  of  agriculture  and  commerce,  Mr. 
Nakashoji,  is  quoted  by  the  "Japan  Chronicle"  as  urg 
ing  Japan  to  develop  her  army  and  navy  until  her  "heav 
enly  gift  of  militarism"  should  render  her  more  formid 
able  than  ever.  Mr.  Arai  Teijiro  surpassed  him  by  say 
ing  that  Japan  should  become  the  ruler  of  all  the  powers 
of  the  world,  promoting  the  welfare  and  freedom  of  all 
nations  of  the  globe.  Mr.  Takekoshi,  formerly  a  member 
of  Parliament  and  author  of  "Japanese  Rule  in  For 
mosa,"  in  1916  published  an  article  advocating  the  seiz 
ure  of  the  Dutch  East  Indies  by  Japan.  He  said:  "It 
is  easy  to  be  peaceful  when  you  have  all  you  want,  but 
it  was  not  by  peaceful  methods  that  the  British  Empire 
became  so  vastly  extended.  If  the  Japanese  wish  to  be 
come  as  powerful  as  western  nations  they  will  have  to 
adopt  the  same  policy  of  expansion  as  western  nations 
followed  until  they  obtained  enough  and  began  to  talk  of 
peace."  The  same  project  of  the  conquest  of  the  Dutch 
Indies  was  urged  also  by  a  retired  captain  of  the  Jap 
anese  Navy,  Hosaka  Hikotare.  Professor  Niita  of  the 
Imperial  University  in  1916  expressed  sympathy  with  the 
revolutionary  party  in  India,  saying:  "The  independ- 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       449 

ence  of  India  cannot  be  expected  in  a  short  time.  After 
Japan's  power  has  increased  a  great  deal  she  may  think 
of  extending  her  protecting  hand  to  India." 

Just  a  year  ago,  in  the  summer  of  1919;  Count  Okuma's 
organ,  the  "Hochi,"  of  Tokio,  said: 


ce  was  the    I 

al  factor  of     S 
ok  not  east- 
'iki  of  Rus-       £ 


"That  age  in  which  the  Anglo-Japanese  Alliance  was  the 
pivot  and  American-Japanese  cooperation  an  essential 
Japanese  diplomacy,  is  gone.  In  future  we  must  look 
ward  for  friendship,  but  westward.  Let  the  Bolsheviki 
sia  be  put  down  and  the  more  peaceful  party  established  in 
power.  In  them  Japan  will  find  a  strong  ally.  By  marching 
westward  to  the  Balkans,  to  Germany,  to  France  and  Italy  the 
greater  part  of  the  world  may  be  brought  under  our  sway. 
The  tyranny  of  the  Anglo-Saxons  at  the  Peace  Conference  is 
such  that  it  has  angered  both  gods  and  men.  Some  may  ab 
jectly  follow  them  in  consideration  of  their  petty  interests  but 
things  will  ultimately  settle  down  as  has  just  been  indicated." 

Some  time  ago  Okuma  himself  made  the  following 
statement  : 

"Being  oppressed  by  the  Europeans,  the  300  millions  of 
India  are  looking  for  Japanese  protection.  They  have  com 
menced  to  boycott  European  merchandise.  If,  therefore,  the 
Japanese  let  the  chance  slip  by  and  do  not  go  to  India,  the 
Indians  will  be  disappointed.  From  old  times  India  has  been 
a  land  of  treasure.  Alexander  the  Great  obtained  there  treas 
ure  sufficient  to  load  a  hundred  camels  and  Mahmoud  and 
Attila  also  obtained  riches  from  India.  Why  should  not  the 
Japanese  stretch  out  their  hands  to  that  country,  now  that  the 
people  are  looking  to  the  Japanese?  The  Japanese  ought  to 
go  to  India,  to  the  South  Seas  and  other  parts  of  the  world." 

Such  quotations  might  easily  be  multiplied;  I  cite 
these  to  show  that  this  aggressive  policy  is  not  the  wild 


450  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

raving  of  irresponsible  people,  but  is  urged  by  people  of 
standing  and  influence. 

Let  us  admit  at  once  that  the  white  man's  conduct  in 
Asia  has  given  abundant  grounds  for  criticism ;  that  his 
conquest  and  annexation  of  territories  rightfully  belong 
ing  to  the  yellow  race  has  furnished  plenty  of  precedents 
for  such  a  program  as  is  entertained  by  Japan.  All  that 
I  am  concerned  with  now  is  the  evidence  of  a  militarist 
spirit  in  Japan.  Perhaps  the  ambition  to  be  the  deliverer 
of  Asia  from  white  domination  is  natural  and  justifiable. 
Perhaps  the  solution  of  the  color  question  may  some  day 
be  found  in  such  a  program.  Only  let  us  not  deceive 
ourselves  as  to  the  conditions. 

I  should  be  unjust,  however,  if  I  should  neglect  to  say 
that  this  aggressive  program  is  not  approved  by  all  Japa 
nese.  There  are  jingoes  in  all  lands,  and  Japan  unfor 
tunately  finds  them  in  her  Government  and  in  other  in 
fluential  circles.  But  there  are  liberal-minded  people  in 
Japan  who  are  opposed  to  this  warlike  policy.  They 
have  been  trying  for  years  to  get  rid  of  the  oligarchy  that 
has  imbibed  the  Prussian  spirit  and  adopted  Prussian 
methods.  They  have  indeed  succeeded  in  enlarging  the 
electorate  to  some  extent,  but  they  have  just  failed  in 
their  attempt  to  obtain  universal  suffrage.  The  number 
of  the  voters  in  Japan  is  still  not  more  than  two  millions. 
Mr.  Ozaki,  whom  I  have  already  quoted,  said  in  an  ad 
dress  delivered  last  January,  ''The  political  and  social 
structure  of  Japan  at  present  may  be  likened  to  putting 
the  peerless  Fuji  upside  down/'  That  is  perhaps  an 
adaptation  of  Andrew  Carnegie's  simile,  in  which  he 
represented  a  monarchy  as  a  pyramid  on  its  apex  and  a 
republic  as  a  pyramid  on  its  base.  In  the  address  to 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES      451 

which  I  refer  Mr.  Ozaki  advocated  a  thorough  social  and 
political  reconstruction.  "To  accomplish  this,"  he  said, 
''nothing  can  be  more  urgent  and  important  than  the 
adoption  of  universal  suffrage  so  that  the  monopoly  of 
political  power  by  certain  classes  of  people  may  be  pre 
vented/'  But  universal  suffrage  will  be  insufficient 
without  amendment  of  the  Constitution,  and  this  can  be 
done  only  upon  the  initiative  of  the  emperor. 

Our  sympathies  are  of  course  with  these  liberals  who 
are  working  under  a  great  handicap.  We  hope  that  they 
may  soon  accomplish  the  reform  at  which  they  are  aim 
ing.  Meantime  we  have  to  do  with  things  as  they  exist. 
We  have  to  do  with  a  government  which  is  aggressively 
militaristic  and  which  through  all  changes  of  cabinet 
never  loses  sight  of  its  goal  and  never  misses  an  oppor 
tunity  to  increase  the  prestige  of  the  empire.  It  is  this 
spirit  that  prompts  it  to  retain  a  hold  upon  its  emigrants 
wherever  they  may  go,  to  organize  them  and  use  them 
to  further  its  aims. 

Such  emigrants  from  Japan  when  they  become  immi 
grants  into  the  United  States  are  kept  under  the  close 
supervision  of  the  Japanese  consular  authorities.  More 
over,  by  direction  of  the  Japanese  Foreign  Office  they  are 
organized  into  societies.  I  am  told  by  Japanese  in  the 
United  States  that  wherever  one  hundred  or  more  Japa 
nese  are  found  in  one  community  they  are  required  to 
organize  a  local  society,  and  this  society  virtually  governs 
the  Japanese  community.  The  society  is  empowered  by 
the  Japanese  Government  to  levy  a  tax  upon  its  members. 
From  twenty-five  cents  to  $1.50  a  month  is  paid  by  each 
family  or  single  adult  male.  With  this  money  a  Japa 
nese  propaganda  is  maintained  throughout  the  State  and 


452  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

nation.  The  society  in  California  raises  from  $40,000  to 
$70,000  a  year  for  this  purpose.  There  are  paid  propa 
gandists  who  are  Japanese,  and  there  are  others  who  are 
Americans.  A  part  of  the  money,  too,  is  used  to  pay  the 
salaries  or  part  of  the  salaries  of  certain  professors  and 
instructors  in  some  American  colleges  and  universities 
where  Japanese  history  is  taught  and  interest  created  in 
Far-Eastern  affairs. 

In  addition  to  this  important  piece  of  work  the  so 
cieties  also  organize  school  boards  which  have  charge  of 
the  education  of  Japanese  children.  The  children  in 
Japanese  families,  even  though  they  are  born  in  the 
United  States  and  are  recognized  by  us  as  American 
citizens,  are  required  to  attend  those  Japanese  schools. 
After  the  American  school  hours  are  over  the  little  Jap 
anese  child  must  go  to  his  Japanese  teacher,  where  he  is 
taught  the  Japanese  language.  If  that  were  all,  it  would 
not  be  so  very  objectionable,  but  it  is  not  all.  The  Japa 
nese  schools  are  a  nursery  of  loyalty  to  Japan.  The 
Japanese  Emperor's  portrait  is  usually  placed  in  each 
school  in  Japan,  and  the  pupils  do  it  reverence,  for  the 
divinity  of  the  emperor  is  a  part  of  the  Japanese  creed. 
The  imperial  edict  of  the  late  Meiji  emperor  is  taught 
in  all  the  schools  as  the  foundation  of  morals. 

This  edict,  which  must  be  learned  by  heart,  is  as  fol 
lows: 

""Know  ye  Our  subjects:  Our  Imperial  Ancestors  have 
founded  Our  Empire  on  a  basis  broad  and  everlasting-  and  have 
deeply  and  firmly  implanted  virtue.  Our  subjects  ever  united 
in  loyalty  and  filial  piety  have  from  generation  to  generation 
illustrated  the  beauty  thereof.  This  is  the  glory  of  the  funda 
mental  character  of  Our  Empire  and  herein  also  lies  the  source 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       453 

of  Our  education.  Ye,  Our  subjects,  be  filial  to  your  parents, 
affectionate  to  your  brothers  and  sisters ;  as  husbands  and  wives 
be  harmonious ;  as  friends  be  true ;  bear  yourselves  in  modesty 
and  moderation ;  extend  your  benevolence  to  all ;  pursue  learn 
ing  and  cultivate  arts,  and  thereby  develop  intellectual  facul 
ties  and  perfect  moral  powers;  furthermore  advance  public 
good  and  promote  common  interests;  Always  respect  the  Con 
stitution  and  observe  the  laws;  should  emergency  arise,  offer 
yourselves  courageously  to  the  State  and  thus  guard  and  main 
tain  the  propriety  of  Our  Imperial  Throne,  coeval  with  Heaven 
and  Earth,  So  shall  ye  be  not  only  Our  good  and  faithful  sub 
jects,  but  render  illustrious  the  best  traditions  of  your  fore 
fathers.  The  way  here  set  forth  is  indeed  the  teaching  be 
queathed  by  Our  Imperial  Ancestors  to  be  observed  alike  by 
Their  Descendants  and  the  subjects,  infallible  for  all  ages  and 
true  in  all  places.  It  is  Our  wish  to  lay  it  to  heart  in  all  rev 
erence,  in  common  with  you,  Our  subjects,  that  we  may  all  thus 
attain  to  the  same  virtue. 

"IMPERIAL  SIG  MANUAL." 

"Privy  Seal." 
"10th  Moon,  30th  day,  Meiji,  1890." 

I  have  not  been  able  to  learn  how  far  these  practices 
are  followed  in  Japanese  schools  in  the  United  States. 

Of  course  the  society  is  unable  to  collect  the  taxes  im 
posed  if  any  are  unwilling  to  pay,  but  few  will  face 
the  scorn  of  their  countrymen  that  will  be  theirs  if  they 
refuse  to  pay.  Moreover,  if  any  refuse,  it  becomes  pos 
sible  sooner  or  later  to  punish  them.  Should  such  a  man 
require  a  passport  or  other  service  from  the  consul,  he 
is  referred  to  the  society,  which  will  report  whether  or 
not  he  is  in  arrears  in  the  payment  of  dues.  If  in  ar 
rears,  he  must  pay  up  in  full  before  he  can  secure  the 
services  of  the  consulate. 


454  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

In  the  establishment  of  Buddhist  temples  in  the  United 
States  the  Japanese  citizen  is  of  course  within  his  rights. 
There  are,  it  is  said,  seventy-eight  such  temples  in  Cali 
fornia.  But  when  we  take  into  consideration  the  sur 
roundings  of  the  Japanese  child,  the  atmosphere  of  the 
home  where  loyalty  to  a  foreign  emperor  is  a  religious 
duty,  where  the  authority  of  the  father  is  submissively 
acknowledged,  when  we  remember  the  powers  of  the 
Japanese  society  and  the  compelling  force  of  Japanese 
opinion,  the  teaching  of  the  Japanese  school,  and  the  bu 
reaucratic  supervision  of  the  Japanese  consulate,  the  ad 
dition  of  the  Japanese  temple  and  its  services  must  be 
allowed  to  augment  the  strength  of  the  ties  that  bind 
that  child  to  Japan  and  tend  to  make  his  profession  of 
allegiance  to  the  United  States  merely  a  convenient  form 
which  must  be  observed  for  the  sake  of  privileges  other 
wise  unobtainable. 

The  Japanese  Government  not  only  retains  a  hold  upon 
its  subjects  in  the  United  States,  but  is  ever  watchful  to 
obstruct  any  legislation  that  seems  to  threaten  their 
rights  as  residents  in  the  United  States. 

It  was  not  until  the  Chinese  exclusion  law  was  passed 
by  Congress  that  there  began  to  be  any  considerable 
number  of  Japanese  immigrants  into  the  United  States; 
in  1880  there  were  only  148  here;  in  1890  there  were 
2,039 ;  in  1909  there  were  in  round  numbers  100,000 ;  to 
day  the  official  estimate  of  the  Japanese  population  of 
this  State  alone  is  87,000,  and  there  are  no  doubt  many 
more.  When  this  rapid  increase  began  to  attract  atten 
tion,  as  it  did  after  1909,  the  commercial  treaty  between 
our  country  and  Japan  came  up  for  revision  in  1911. 
The  Japanese  are  a  proud  people  and  could  not  submit  to 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES      455 

any  mention  in  the  treaty  of  a  restriction  upon  immigra 
tion.  The  first  article  of  the  treaty  therefore  provides 
reciprocally  that 

"The  citizens  and  subjects  of  each  of  the  High  Contracting 
Parties  shall  have  liberty  to  enter,  travel  and  reside  in  the 
territories  of  the  other  to  carry  on  trade,  wholesale  and  retail, 
to  own  or  lease  and  occupy  houses,  manufactories,  warehouses 
and  shops,  to  employ  agents  of  their  choice,  to  lease  land  for 
residential  and  commercial  purposes,  and  generally  to  do  any 
thing  incident  to  or  necessary  for  trade  upon  the  same  terms 
as  native  citizens  or  subjects,  submitting  themselves  to  the  laws 
and  regulations  there  established." 

This  provision  gives  the  Japanese  in  this  country  and 
Americans  in  Japan  the  right  to  reside  in  such  places 
for  the  purpose  of  trade.  There  is  no  comma  after  the 
phrase  ''reside  in  the  territories  of  the  other,"  so  that 
the  following  words,  "to  carry  on  trade,"  define  the  ob 
ject  of  their  residence  there.  This  undoubtedly  was 
intentional.  Americans,  of  course,  are  not  likely  to  want 
to  carry  on  agriculture  in  Japan,  but  if  they  should  so 
desire  they  cannot  claim  the  right  under  this  treaty. 
The  Japanese  do  carry  on  agriculture  in  the  United 
States,  and  the  treaty  does  not  forbid  it,  but  there  can  be 
no  claim  of  a  right  to  do  so  under  the  provisions  of  the 
treaty.  The  article  also  gives  the  right  to  own  houses, 
but  does  not  give  the  right  to  own  land.  It  gives  the 
right  to  lease  land  for  residential  purposes  and  for 
commercial  purposes,  but  not  agricultural  purposes. 
An  American  cannot  own  land  in  Japan  under  the  pro 
visions  of  the  treaty ;  that  is  to  say,  no  affirmative  right 
is  given,  but  in  this  case  the  silence  of  the  treaty  is  sup 
plemented  by  Japanese  law  which  forbids  the  ownership 


456  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

of  land  by  aliens.  It  is  true  that  the  Japanese  Diet 
some  years  ago  passed  a  new  law  granting  ownership  to 
aliens,  but  it  was  never  put  into  force.  It  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  the  Diet  has  no  right  to  legislate  over 
the  veto  of  the  Government,  and,  even  when  the  Govern 
ment  has  approved,  the  law  does  not  become  operative 
until  an  imperial  edict  to  that  effect  is  issued. 

This  first  article  of  the  treaty  was  very  carefully 
drawn,  and  what  is  omitted  is  just  as  intentionally  omit 
ted  as  the  inclusions  are  intentionally  included.  Under 
the  treaty,  therefore,  Japanese  have  no  affirmative  right 
to  own  land  in  the  United  States  and  no  right  to  lease 
land  except  for  residential  and  commercial  purposes. 
The  same  is  true  of  Americans  in  Japan.  The  provision 
is  strictly  reciprocal. 

Another  important  provision  of  the  treaty  is  that  of 
Article  VII,  which  reads : 

"Limited-liability  and  other  companies  and  associations,  com 
mercial,  industrial  and  financial,  already  or  hereafter  to  be 
organized  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  either  High  Contract 
ing  Party  and  domiciled  in  the  territories  of  the  other,  to  exer 
cise  their  rights  and  appear  in  the  courts  either  as  plaintiffs 
or  defendants,  subject  to  the  laws  of  the  country.  The  fore 
going  stipulation  has  no  bearing  upon  the  question  whether  a 
company  or  association  organized  in  one  of  the  two  countries, 
will  or  will  not  be  permitted  to  transact  business  or  industry  in 
the  other,  this  permission  remaining  always  subject  to  the  laws 
and  regulations  enacted  or  established  in  the  respective  country 
or  in  any  part  thereof." 

This  expressly  reserves  to  each  country  the  right  to 
say  upon  what  terms  or  under  what  conditions,  if  any, 
a  foreign  corporation  may  do  business  in  that  country. 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       457 

It  grants  nothing  more  than  the  right  to  appear  in  court 
to  prosecute  or  to  defend. 

After  this  treaty  had  been  signed,  the  Japanese  Am 
bassador,  Baron,  now  Viscount,  Uchida,  made  this  decla- 
:  ration: 

"In  proceeding  this  day  to  the  signature  of  the  Treaty  of 
Commerce  and  Navigation  between  Japan  and  the  United 
States,  the  undersigned,  Japanese  Ambassador  in  Washing 
ton,  duly  authorized  by  his  Government  has  the  honor  to  declare 
that  the  Imperial  Japanese  Government  are  fully  prepared  to 
maintain  with  equal  effectiveness  the  limitation  and  control 
which  they  have  for  the  past  three  years  exercised  in  regulation 
of  the  emigration  of  laborers  to  the  United  States. 

"Y.  UCHIDA." 
"February  21,  1911." 

This  refers  to  the  so-called  ''Gentlemen's  Agreement," 
entered  into  in  1908  by  Secretary  Root  and  Ambassador 
Takahira,  in  accordance  with  which  the  Japanese  Gov 
ernment  would  itself  withhold  passports  from  all  labor 
ers  who  might  desire  to  go  to  the  United  States.  In  other 
words,  the  only  restriction  upon  Japanese  immigration  is 
a  voluntary  one  on  the  part  of  Japan,  which  of  course 
can  be  terminated  at  any  time  by  that  Government.  At 
first  it  wras  an  oral  agreement,  but  later  was  embodied  in 
a  memorandum,  and  then  in  1911  supported  by  the  writ 
ten  pledge  which  I  have  just  given. 

The  Japanese  are  naturally  very  sensitive  in  regard 
to  this  matter  and  have  been  unwilling  that  any  refer 
ence  should  be  made  in  our  legislation  to  this  arrange 
ment  as  in  any  way  binding  the  Japanese  Government. 
It  must  be  accepted,  as  it  is,  a  voluntary  restriction  of 
emigration  of  laborers  from  Japan.  But  the  increase 


458  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

of  Japanese  holdings  of  land  in  California  led,  as  we  all 
know,  to  the  legislation  of  1913,  forbidding  to  aliens  not 
eligible  to  naturalization  the  ownership  of  land  in  Cali 
fornia.  The  situation  has  grown  more  and  more  critical 
along  the  Pacific  coast,  and  when  a  new  bill  restricting 
immigration  was  introduced  into  the  national  House  of 
Representatives  in  1916,  a  clause  was  inserted  which 
made  some  indirect  reference  to  the  voluntary  restriction 
by  Japan  of  the  emigration  of  laborers  to  the  United 
States,  which  was  intended  to  exempt  from  operation  of 
the  law  any  country  that  voluntarily  refused  passports  to 
laborers,  but  only  so  long  as  the  restriction  was  en 
forced.  At  first  the  Japanese  made  no  objection,  but  at 
the  next  session  of  Congress  in  1917  they  made  decided 
objection  to  the  phraseology.  Various  attempts  to  re 
vise  it  were  made,  but  finally  it  was  abandoned,  and  a 
clause  was  substituted  which  excluded  all  laborers  coming 
from  within  certain  meridians  of  longitude  and  parallels 
of  latitude.  The  clause  is  a  very  cumbersome  one,  and  is 
designed  to  shut  out  undesirable  immigration  from  India 
and  neighboring  countries,  but  drawn  in  such  a  way 
as  to  admit  certain  elements  from  northern  Turkey  and 
Persia. 

During  the  year  1917  several  States  in  our  Northwest 
had  bills  introduced  to  restrict  the  ownership  of  land,  all 
modeled  upon  the  legislation  of  California.  As  we  were 
at  war  with  Germany,  the  Department  of  State  felt  that 
it  would  be  most  unwise  to  stir  up  an  agitation  of  this 
question,  and  at  its  request  the  several  legislatures  aban 
doned  the  matter.  So  also  in  1919.  But  we  are  no 
longer  conducting  military  operations  in  Europe,  and 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES      459 

the  question  of  Oriental  labor  confronts  us  again.    What 
ought  to  be  the  answer? 

There  can  be  but  one  principle  to  guide  us  in  attempt-  1 
ing  a  solution  of  the  problem.  That  principle  is  justice. 
We  must  be  just  to  Japan  and  to  the  Japanese  people; 
we  must  in  particular  avoid  anything  like  injustice  to 
those  Japanese  who  are  now  in  the  United  States,  most 
of  whom  are  here  lawfully.  This  is  no  time  for  an  ap 
peal  to  unreasoning  prejudice.  Race  prejudice  unfor 
tunately  exists,  but  our  pride  of  race  and  our  desire  to 
keep  the  blood  unmixed  ought  not  to  make  us  blind  to 
the  good  qualities  of  other  races  or  indifferent  to  their 
rights. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  must  be  just  to  our  own  people, 
who  have  built  up  this  great  commonwealth  and  who  de 
sire  to  preserve  it  as  a  heritage  for  their  children.  The 
most  hig-hly  cultivated  plants  must  be  carefully  protected 
against  competition  with  other  plants.  Otherwise  they 
fail  to  hold  their  ground,  and  either  degenerate  or  dis 
appear.  Our  civilization  is  a  delicate  plant  which  can 
not  enter  into  unprotected  competition  with  certain  other 
hardy  varieties.  That  competition  must  be  reduced  by 
such  restriction  as  will  give  the  needed  protection. 

Japan,  too,  must  be  just,  just  to  her  own  people  and 
just  to  us.  It  is  unjust  to  her  own  people  in  the  United 
States  and  to  us  to  endeavor  as  she  has  done  in  past 
years  to  retain  control  over  them;  to  organize  them  into 
so-called  societies  which  are  really  local  governments, 
making  here  in  our  midst  an  imperium  in  imperio,  and 
ruling  them  even  while  they  are  within  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  American  Government.  It  is  particularly  unjust 


460  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

to  the  Japanese  children  born  as  American  citizens  that 
she  should  train  them  from  infancy  to  make  loyalty  to 
Japan  a  part  of  their  religion,  and  yet  permit  them  for 
the  sake  of  certain  economic  advantages  here  to  become 
American  citizens  in  name,  assuring  them,  as  present 
Japanese  laws  do,  that  immediately  upon  their  return 
to  Japan,  if  they  establish  a  domicile  there,  they  become 
vat  once  without  ceremony  Japanese  subjects, 
f  I  do  not  forget  the  improvement  made  by  recent  modi- 
:  fication  of  the  law  of  military  service,  exempting  from 
its  operation  those  children  whose  guardians  will  declare 
before  the  child  reaches  fifteen  years  of  age  that  he  is 
to  become  an  American  citizen  and  who  will  apply  for 
such  exemption.  This,  however,  will  not  relieve  from  the 
conflicting  claims  of  a  dual  citizenship  those  children 
whose  parents  or  guardians  neglect  to  make  the  required 
declaration  before  the  child  reaches  the  age  of  fifteen 
years.  But  it  is  a  step  in  the  right  direction.  Now  let 
the  Japanese  Government  take  a  second  step;  withdraw 
from  the  direction  and  control  of  the  Japanese  in  Amer 
ica  and  advise  its  subjects  here  to  dissolve  that  organiza 
tion.  Let  it  furthermore  give  up  its  attempts  to  control 
the  education  of  Japanese  children  in  the  United  States. 
Lastly  let  it  abandon  its  semi-official  propaganda  and 
leave  the  Japanese  residents  of  the  United  States  free  to 
adopt  American  ideals  and  become  Americanized. 

But  such  action  upon  the  part  of  Japan  would  call  for 
reciprocal  action  upon  our  part.  It  is  bad  policy  on  the 
part  of  the  American  Government  to  admit  large  num 
bers  of  any  race  to  become  permanent  residents  of  the 
country  and  yet  deny  them  the  privilege  of  being  nat 
uralized.  By  that  denial  we  force  them  to  segregate 


CONFLICTING  NATIONAL  POLICIES       461 

themselves  and  organize  for  self -protection.  We  compel 
them  to  retain  their  allegiance  to  a  foreign  state,  and  yet 
blame  them  for  training  their  children  to  that  same  al 
legiance.  We  ought  either  to  limit  such  immigration^ 
very  strictly  or  to  grant  the  privilege  of  naturalization.. 

And  whatever  we  do  should  be  done  by  a  convention 
whose  terms  will  be  reciprocal,  denying  to  Americans  in 
Japan  all  that  we  deny  to  Japanese  here.  We  must  not 
forget  that  our  present  treaty  with  Japan — that  of  1911 
— permits  Japanese  immigration.  Until  we  relieve  our 
selves  of  our  obligations  under  that  treaty  we  cannot 
honorably  enact  restrictive  legislation.  The  treaty  is 
due  for  revision  in  1923,  but  may  be  terminated  at  any 
time  by  giving  six  months'  notice  of  such  intention. 
But,  if  we  should  decide  to  terminate  that  treaty  and  ar 
range  for  a  restriction  of  Japanese  immigration,  we  are 
still  left  with  a  very  serious  problem — that  of  dealing 
justly  with  the  Japanese  already  lawfully  in  the  coun 
try.  And  of  the  same  sort  is  the  problem  of  dealing 
justly  with  the  Chinese  and  other  Asiatics  who  also  are 
lawfully  here. 

I  suggest  that,  if  we  admit  as  immigrants  hereafter 
only  those  Orientals  who  belong  to  the  favored  classes 
and  entirely  exclude  all  laborers  and  agriculturists,  as 
is  already  done  with  the  Chinese  and  certain  other  Asi 
atics,  we  can  well  afford  to  grant  American  citizenship 
to  those  already  here  ivho  are  willing  to  be  naturalized. 
The  total  number  of  Japanese  now  in  the  United  States 
is  very  small  when  compared  with  the  whole  population ; 
the  number  of  Chinese  is  still  smaller,  and,  in  fact,  neg 
ligible.  Grant  them  all  American  citizenship  and  let 
their  children  grow  up  as  Americans.  Within  two  gen- 


462  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

]  erations  thereafter,  it  is  safe  to  say,  they  would  be  lost 
in  the  great  body  of  the  American  people. 

There  need  be  no  difficulty  in  making  the  naturaliza 
tion  of  Orientals  entirely  legal.  The  Constitution  of 
the  United  States  provides  that  Congress  shall  have 
power  to  "establish  an  uniform  rule  of  naturalization." 
The  first  national  Congress  passed  an  act  for  naturaliza 
tion  of  aliens  who  should  be  free  white  persons.  After 
the  adoption  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  to  the  Con 
stitution  additional  legislation  was  had  to  provide  for 
the  grant  of  citizenship  to  the  negroes. 

There  can  be  no  doubt,  therefore,  as  to  the  power  of 
Congress  to  amend  the  law  still  further  so  that  those 
aliens  of  the  yellow  race  who  are  lawfully  in  the  United 
States  or  who  may  hereafter  come  lawfully  to  have  a 
domicile  here,  may  be  naturalized. 

If  such  legislation  were  had,  the  great  majority  of  the 
Asiatics  of  foreign  birth  would  ask  for  naturalization. 
Such  action  would  be  encouraged  and  hastened  by  an 
amendment  of  the  California  Alien  Land  Law  so  as  to 
forbid  the  holding  of  land  for  agricultural  purposes  by 
minor  children  of  Orientals  who  are  not  naturalized. 

If  a  provision  for  the  naturalization  of  Orientals  now 
in  this  country  can  not  be  inserted  in  the  conventions 
that  are  to  stipulate  the  exclusion  hereafter  of  laborers 
and  agriculturists,  then  California  will  be  justified  in 
barring  the  transfer  of  land  to  the  minor  children  of 
Orientals  who  are  not  citizens. 


CHAPTER  28 
CHEAP  LABOR   AND   STANDARDS  OF  LIVING 


For  the  benefit  of  those  who  have  not  followed  eco 
nomics  closely  the  following  brief  statement  as  to  the 
connection  between  cheap  labor  and  living  standards  will 
prove  useful,  especially  in  conjunction  with  the  reading 
of  Books  III  and  IV.  It  has  been  prepared  by  Mr.  War 
ren  S.  Thompson. 


THE  term  " cheap  labor"  here  refers  to  any  type  of 
workmen  who,  because  of  their  relatively  low  stand 
ards  of  living,  are  able  and  willing  to  accept  a  lower 
wage  or  price  for  a  given  amount  of  labor  or  goods  than 
workmen  having  higher  standards  of  living.  It  is  ob 
vious  that  workmen  who  are  accustomed  to  living  on  a 
very  monotonous  diet,  who  are  contented  to  crowd  to 
gether  in  shanties  and  vile  tenements,  who  put  their  chil 
dren  to  work  at  the  youngest  possible  age,  who  encourage 
their  wives  to  go  to  work  outside  the  home,  and  who  ex 
pect  nothing  in  return  from  their  labor  but  the  creature 
necessities  of  life,  can  accept  a  lower  wage  than  workmen 
who  are  accustomed  to  living  in  better  surroundings,  who 
want  their  wives  to  be  able  to  remain  at  home  and  care 
for  their  children,  and  who  want  their  children  to  get  a 
fair  education  as  a  start  in  the  struggle  of  life. 

It  is  but  natural  that  we  should  find  employers  and 

463 


464  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

employees  looking  at  the  problem  of  cheap  labor  from 
entirely  different  points  of  view,  and  therefore  arriving 
at  opposite  conclusions,  regarding  the  necessity  and  de 
sirability  of  doing  all  in  our  power  to  keep  up  the  supply 
of  such  labor.  The  employer,  as  never  before,  is  becom 
ing  involved  in  a  competition  for  world  markets  with  the 
employers  of  other  lands,  and  often  feels  that,  if  he  is  to 
stay  in  the  game,  he  must  have  a  supply  of  cheap  and 
docile  labor.  He  believes  that  his  competitors  have  an 
abundance  of  such  labor,  and  in  order  to  meet  them  on 
equal  terms  in  the  world's  markets  he,  too,  must  have 
cheap  labor.  The  laborer,  on  the  other  hand,  looks  at 
the  problem  as  one  of  maintaining  his  standard  of  living 
in  competition  with  workmen  who  are  not  accustomed  to 
living  as  well  as  he,  and  feels  that  the  best  way  to  deal 
with  the  matter  is  to  prevent  competition.  He  would 
like  to  prevent  the  cheap  laborers  of  foreign  lands  from 
coming  here  in  such  numbers  as  to  endanger  his  position, 
and  he  would  like  to  undertake  the  education  of  those 
now  here  so  that  they  would  demand  conditions  of  em 
ployment  and  wages  equal  to  his  own. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  student  interested  in 
our  national  population  movements,  the  problem  of  cheap 
labor  is  one  of  vital  importance.  It  is  a  universal  rule 
of  population  growth  that  people  with  low  standards  of 
living  have  a  higher  birth-rate  than  those  with  higher 
standards  of  living.  A  large  number  of  births  are  not 
felt  to  be  a  burden  among  people  with  low  standards  of 
living.  They  expect  quite  a  large  percentage  of  their 
children  to  die  in  infancy,  and  they  expect  those  who 
grow  up  to  go  to  work  at  a  very  tender  age,  and  thus 
partly  or  wholly  support  themselves.  Whether  people 


CHEAP  LABOR  465 

with  low  standards  of  living  increase  in  numbers  depends 
upon  their  being  able  to  secure  food  and  shelter  suf 
ficient  to  raise  more  than  enough  children  to  replace  the 
parents.  Those  who  know  China  best  believe  that  al 
though  its  birth-rate  is  very  high,  its  population  is  virtu 
ally  stationary,  because  of  the  difficulty  of  increasing  the 
food  supply.  When,  however,  people  with  low  stand 
ards  of  living  come  into  competition  with  people  having 
higher  standards  of  living,  the  former  increase  generally 
more  rapidly  than  the  latter  because  their  death-rate  is 
lowered  by  the  greater  ease  of  securing  the  scanty  means 
of  sustenance  to  which  they  have  been  accustomed.  Con 
sequently,  people  of  low  standards  of  living  tend  to  sup 
plant  those  with  higher  standards  when  the  two  come 
into  close  competition.  There  are  many  places  in  the 
world  where  this  process  is  going  on  to-day. 

In  Transylvania  the  Rumanians  and  Magyars  come 
into  keen  competition.  The  Rumanian  peasants,  with 
their  lower  standards  of  living,  are  increasing  more  rap 
idly  than  the  Magyar  peasants  and  are  slowly,  but  stead 
ily,  pushing  them  back.  The  Rumanian  peasants  have 
been  a  mountain  people  having  hard  work  to  make  a 
bare  living.  As  they  creep  down  from  the  mountains, 
they  find  living  easier  and  have  but  little  trouble  in  dis 
placing  the  people  of  the  plains,  who  have  developed 
higher  standards  of  living.  They  can  pay  a  higher  ren 
tal  for  land  or  a  higher  price  when  they  buy,  because 
they  use  a  smaller  proportion  of  the  total  product  to  sus 
tain  themselves.  Not  only  are  the  Rumanians  supplant 
ing  the  Magyars,  but  they  are  Rumanizing  those  who  re 
main  behind.  The  Magyars  who  stay  to  compete  with 
the  Rumanians  are  coming  to  live  as  the  Rumanians  and 


466  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

to  speak  their  language.  A  friend  of  mine  told  me  of 
instances  he  had  personally  observed  when  Magyars  in 
blood  even  denied  that  they  were  Magyars  and  claimed 
to  be  Rumanians,  so  dominant  had  everything  Rumanian 
become  in  many  localities. 

On  other  frontiers  of  Hungary  the  same  process  has 
been  going  on.  The  Slovaks  and  the  Ruthenians  are 
supplanting  the  Magyars  on  the  northeast  frontier. 
When  we  realize  how  this  process  of  infiltration  of 
peoples  having  lower  standards  of  living  threatened  the 
dominance  of  the  Magyars  not  only  in  the  outlying 
provinces  of  Hungary,  but  even  in  the  central  plain, 
where  they  have  been  settled  for  a  thousand  years  or 
more,  we  shall  better  understand  why  they  resorted  to 
questionable  methods  to  make  good  Magyars  out  of  Ru 
manians,  Slovaks,  Ruthenians,  Croatians,  and  other  of 
the  Slavic  groups  by  which  they  are  surrounded.  The 
Magyars  felt  that  they  must  either  Magyarize  the  peoples 
who  surrounded  them  or  see  themselves  slowly  perish  as 
a  dominant  race,  and  finally  be  entirely  supplanted  by 
these  peoples  who  could  live  more  cheaply  than  they. 
There  is  not  the  least  doubt  that  they  were  correct  in 
diagnosing  the  situation.  They  laid  themselves  open  to 
severe  condemnation  because  of  the  methods  they  adopted 
to  effect  the  Magyarizing  of  the  foreign  elements  within 
their  boundaries. 

In  Prussia,  where  Pole  and  German  come  into  compe 
tition,  the  story  is  the  same.  Prussia  did  everything  that 
Prussian  minds  could  devise  to  Prussianize  the  Poles  in 
her  portion  of  the  old  kingdom  of  Poland.  All  her 
conscious  efforts  were  in  vain.  The  Prussian  authorities 
complained  that  the  Poles  multiplied  so  much  more  rap- 


CHEAP  LABOR  467 

idly  than  the  Germans  that  every  year  saw  the  real  Polish 
frontier  a  little  closer  to  Berlin.  Even  when  German 
colonies,  aided  hy  the  Government,  were  planted  as 
a  breakwater  to  the  Polish  tide  and  as  centers  from 
which  a  German  culture  should  radiate  to  the  Poles, 
they  were  swamped  by  the  Poles  because  of  their  pa 
triotism  and  their  greater  rate  of  natural  increase. 
The  colonists  were  unable  to  compete  with  the  Poles 
in  the  renting  and  purchase  of  land.  The  Prus 
sians,  as  the  Magyars,  went  at  the  whole  matter  of  as 
similation  in  a  way  to  arouse  antagonism  and  make  it  a 
point  of  national  honor  on  the  part  of  their  subjects  not 
to  yield  to  their  rulers  in  any  respect;  but  one  funda 
mental  reason  for  the  failure  of  their  carefully  laid  plans 
is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  they  were  dealing  with 
peoples  having  lower  standards  of  living  and  therefore 
greater  power  of  reproduction.  They  could  not  com 
pete  economically  with  the  Poles;  consequently  they  were 
being  displaced.  Both  the  Prussians  and  the  Magyars 
might  have  been  able  to  assimilate  their  foreign  elements 
if  different  methods  had  been  adopted,  but  nothing  they 
could  do  would  have  prevented  the  peoples  with  lower 
standards  of  living  from  becoming  a  constantly  increas 
ing  proportion  of  their  total  populations.  It  was  the 
consciousness  of  this  fact  that  made  them  over-zealous  in. 
their  efforts  at  assimilation. 

In  our  own  country  we  have  many  examples  of  this 
principle  of  population  growth.  In  many  industries  we 
have  had  a  constant  succession  of  emplo}rees  of  different 
nationalities  succeeding  one  another  because  the  latest 
arrivals  had  lower  standards  of  living  and  could  under 
bid  those  who  had  acquired  slightly  better  standards. 


468  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

In  every  case  the  new-comers  had  also  the  higher  birth 
rate. 

In  the  packing  houses  of  Chicago  the  Irish  and  Ger 
mans  were  supplanted  by  the  Slavs  of  various  nationali 
ties,  and  recently  the  Slavs  have  been  yielding  to  the 
negroes.  This  process  has  been  obvious,  and  no  one 
would  deny  for  a  moment  that  cheap  labor  can  supplant 
more  expensive  labor  in  a  highly  mechanized  industry 
like  meat-packing.  What  is  not  $o  generally  recognized, 
is  that  the  latest  arrivals,  having  the  lowest  standards  of 
living  (with  the  possible  exception  of  the  negroes)  also 
produce  a  larger  proportion  of  the  children  of  the  next 
generation  than  the  people  whose  jobs  they  take. 

In  the  iron  and  steel  industry  the  competition  between 
people  with  different  standards  of  living  has  been  even 
more  marked  than  in  the  meat-packing  industry.  The 
English,  Scotch,  and  Welsh  gave  way  to  the  Irish  and 
Germans.  After  the  Homestead  strike  most  of  these 
north  Europeans  were  supplanted  by  Slavs  and  Italians. 
Recently  negroes  have  become  numerous  in  the  industry. 
Somewhat  the  same  series  of  changes  has  taken  place  in 
coal-mining.  In  all  such  cases  the  most  obvious  fact  is 
that  people  with  little  skill  and  low  standards  of  living 
have  been  taking  the  places  of  workmen  having  higher 
standards  of  living.  What  has  not  become  so  clear,  al 
though  it  is  just  as  certain,  is  that  all  these  groups  of 
new-comers  have  contributed  more  than  their  due  pro 
portion  to  the  numbers  of  the  next  generation.  Thus  the 
process  of  supplanting  has  gone  on ;  but  since  it  has  been 
much  more  difficult  to  see  than  the  process  of  individual 
displacement,  most  people  have  not  realized  that  it  was 
going  on. 


CHEAP  LABOR  469 

In  this  country  it  has  not  been  possible  to  measure  the 
extent  of  the  supplanting  of  the  people  with  higher  stand 
ards  by  those  having  lower  standards  of  living  as  could 
be  done  in  Europe.  New-comers  have  been  employed  in 
manufacturing  and  mining  rather  than  engaged  in  ag 
riculture,  and  consequently  have  not  been  fixed  in  a  defi 
nite  location,  where  their  expansion  could  be  easily  seen. 
Our  Federal  Census  Bureau  has  data  in  its  files  which 
would  throw  much  light  upon  the  relative  rates  of  in 
crease  of  people  recently  arrived  here  and  those  of  older 
stock,  but  has  never  tabulated  and  published  them. 

From  a  great  variety  of  sources,  however,  we  get  bits 
of  information  which  show  clearly  that  the  process  of 
supplanting  is  going  steadily  forward  in  our  urban  com 
munities.  As  long  ago  as  1850  it  was  observed  in  New 
England  that  the  families  of  the  old  stock  were  not  as 
large  as  those  of  the  recently  arrived  Irish.  Now  it  is 
the  French  Canadians,  Jews,  and  Italians  who  are  sup 
planting  not  only  the  older  natives,  but  the  Irish,  Eng 
lish,  Germans,  and  Scandinavians  who  came  to  us  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Not  long  ago  I  had  occasion  to  visit  some  of  the  more 
hilly  regions  of  central  New  York  in  the  region  of  aban 
doned  farms.  The  old  American  stock,  chiefly  Connecti 
cut  farmer  Yankees,  which  settled  in  this  region  about 
125  or  150  years  ago,  is  still  the  dominant  stock  in  most 
settlements.  A  few  years  ago  several  families  of  Finns 
settled  in  one  of  the  neighborhoods.  Other  families  soon 
joined  them,  and  to-day  they  are  gradually  displacing 
the  Americans.  In  several  neighborhoods  they  consti 
tute  a  majority  of  the  population.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  they  will  continue  to  supplant  the  Americans  in  this 


470  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

part  of  the  country  until  it  becomes  wholly  a  Finnish 
settlement.  They  have  low  standards  of  living,  permit 
ting  of  putting  children  to  work  at  an  early  age,  of  work 
ing  the  women  and  girls  in  the  fields,  of  going  barefoot 
during  the  warm  weather,  of  keeping  house  in  a  rather 
primitive  manner,  etc.,  which  enables  them  to  raise  large 
families  without  feeling  any  deprivation  or  hardship. 
The  Americans  cannot  compete  with  them,  and  are  selling 
out  as  rapidly  as  they  can  find  purchasers,  just  as  their 
fellow-countrymen  are  doing  in  the  rich  California  val 
leys  which  the  Japanese  have  invaded. 

Again  let  me  state  the  principle  of  population  growth 
I  have  illustrated  above:  when  peoples  having  different 
standards  of  living  come  into  direct  competition,  the 
people  having  the  lower  standards  will  increase  in  num 
bers  more  rapidly  than  the  people  having  the  higher 
standards,  and  will,  in  the  natural  course  of  events, 
supplant  the  latter.  The  rate  at  which  the  process  of 
supplanting  will  go  on  will  depend  upon  the  degree 
of  difference  in  the  standards  of  living  of  the  compet 
ing  groups.  If  there  is  but  little  difference  in  their 
standards,  the  process  will  go  forward  slowly,  perhaps 
imperceptibly ;  if  the  difference  is  great,  the  process  will 
be  rapid  and  will  be  easy  to  observe. 

The  explanation  of  this  situation  is  simple.  Always 
and  everywhere  that  complex  group  of  social  and  eco 
nomic  customs,  called  the  standard  of  living,  has  great 
inertia.  People  do  not  like  to  change  their  habits  of 
life,  and  it  usually  takes  several  generations  of  them  to 
make  any  large  change,  even  in  a  society  so  accustomed 
to  change  as  that  of  western  Europe  and  America. 
Changes  in  the  standard  of  living  in  an  upward  direction, 


CHEAP  LABOR  471 

although  slow,  take  place  with  greater  ease  and  rapidity 
than  changes  tending  to  lower  the  standard  of  living,  be 
cause  they  are  not  accompanied  by  any  new  physical 
hardship.  Changes  tending  to  lower  the  standard  of  liv 
ing  are  resisted  with  great  tenacity  and  will  not  be  en 
dured  if  it  is  possible  to  prevent  them.  One  of  the 
simplest  and  most  certain  ways  of  preserving  one's  stand 
ards  in  the  face  of  competition  tending  to  reduce  them 
is  to  limit  the  number  of  persons  dependent  on  a  given 
income  to  that  which  it  will  support  in  the  customary 
manner.  Consequently,  as  the  death-rate  falls  among  a 
people  acquiring  a  higher  standard  of  living,  the  birth 
rate  falls.  When  people  have  acquired  the  habits  that 
go  with  a  high  standard  of  living  and  find  themselves 
forced  into  competition  with  people  having  a  lower  stand 
ard,  they  again  reduce  their  birth-rate  by  putting  off 
marriage  to  a  later  date,  by  remaining  single,  and  by 
limiting  the  number  of  births. 

In  the  very  nature  of  the  case  a  people  of  lower  stand 
ards  introduced  among  a  people  of  higher  standards  has 
a  lower  death-rate  than  it  has  been  accustomed  to,  be 
cause  of  better  sanitation,  better  medical  care,  more  abun 
dant  and  wholesome  food,  and  more  adequate  shelter.  It 
is  inevitable,  therefore,  that  it  should  increase  in  numbers 
very  rapidly  and  that  its  children  should  take  the  places 
of  those  who  would  have  been  born  to  the  people  of  higher 
standards  if  they  had  been  able  to  support  larger  fami 
lies  in  their  accustomed  manner. 

From  the  point  of  view  <of  population  growth,  there- 
fore,  a  constantly  replenished  supply  of  ({ cheap  labor" 
means  a  constantly  larger  proportion  of  our  population 
coming  from  the  races  and  nationalities  furnishing  this 


472  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

cheap  labor  and,  obversely,  a  constantly  smaller  propor 
tion  from  the  groups  with  higher  standards  of  living. 
This  is  as  certain  as  it  is  that  the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow. 
In  the  long  run  this  aspect  of  the  problem  of  cheap  labor 
is  the  most  important,  and  it  is  greatly  to  be  regretted 
that  it  is  often  overlooked  by  those  discussing  this  ques 
tion.  In  my  judgment  a  large  proportion  of  the  easy 
optimism  so  characteristic  of  most  talk  about  immigra 
tion  and  cheap  labor  is  due,  not  to  a  careful  considera 
tion  of  the  problems  involved  and  a  well-grounded  faith 
in  our  ability  to  solve  them  satisfactorily,  but  rather  to 
the  failure  to  study  the  situation  in  all  its  manifold 
aspects  and,  therefore,  to  think  it  much  simpler  than  it 
really  is. 

I  believe  that  up  to  the  present  time  the  older  Amer 
ican  stock  from  northern  and  western  Europe  has  held 
its  own  in  competition  with  the  newer  stocks  from  south 
ern  and  eastern  Europe.  The  explanation  is  that  a  large 
majority  of  our  people,  those  living  in  the  open  country 
and  in  small  cities  and  villages,  have  not  come  into  com 
petition  with  people  having  lower  standards  of  living. 
As  a  consequence,  they  have  not  been  forced  to  reduce 
their  birth-rate  as  rapidly  as  that  part  of  the  older  stock 
living  in  the  cities,  where  the  competition  has  been  keen. 
The  rural  population  has  been  able  not  only  to  hold  its 
own,  but  to  increase  faster  than  the  newer  immigrants, 
because  of  the  relatively  low  death-rate.  When,  how 
ever,  the  newer  immigrants  begin  to  settle  in  the  open 
country  in  considerable  numbers,  we  shall  find  the  people 
of  the  older  stock  reducing  their  birthrate  rapidly  and 
yielding  up  the  land  to  the  new-comers.  It  is  to  be  hoped 


CHEAP  LABOR  473 

that  we  shall  not  wait  until  we  are  confronted  by  this 
actual  condition  to  take  measures  to  insure  the  protec 
tion  of  American  stock  from  a  competition  in  which  it 
has  no  chance  of  survival. 


CHAPTER  29 

NEW  AGRARIAN  POLICIES  IN  AUSTRALIA  AND 
CALIFORNIA 

BY  ELWOOD  MEAD 


doctrine  that  people  have  a  moral  right  to  go  to 
-i-  any  country  they  elect  is  not  recognized  by  other  en 
lightened  countries.  Australia  and  Canada  exclude  all 
Orientals.  Japan  herself  will  not  permit  aliens  to  own 
land.  It  will  not  permit  Chinese  or  Korean  coolies  to 
settle  in  Japan  as  farm  laborers,  the  reason  being  that 
it  would  lower  the  wages  of  the  Japanese.  And  in  this 
the  Japanese  Government  displays  sound  statesmanship. 
Our  country  stands  at  the  parting  of  the  ways.  It 
must  either  protect  its  white  civilization  by  excluding 
the  brown,  or  it  must  be  prepared  for  continued  rural 
conflicts,  which  will  grow  more  bitter  in  time.  "A  house 
divided  against  itself  cannot  stand"  is  as  true  of  this 
situation  as  it  was  of  slavery.  East  is  East  and  West 
is  West.  Our  soil  and  our  flag  cannot  sustain  and  pro 
tect  both.  If  California's  rural  life  becames  a  patch 
work  of  black,  white,  and  brown  communities,  nothing 
but  unending  strife  can  result. 

The  political  bulwark  of  this  nation  to-day  is  the 
55,000,000  people  of  English  or  north  European  ancestry 
that  created  our  free  institutions.  They  are  the  leaders 
of  our  social  and  political  life.  They  have  shown  such 

474 


NEW  AGRARIAN  POLICIES  475 

exceptional  capacity  for  government,  such  regard  for  lib 
erty,  law,  and  order,  that  we  should  be  careful  how  we 
dilute  or  submerge  this  blood  by  a  large  influx  of  peo 
ples  whose  respect  for  free  instiutions  and  capacity  for 
democratic  growth  is  unknown.  Our  enduring  welfare 
will  be  promoted  not  so  much  in  increase  in  population  as 
by  maintenance  of  high  standards  of  human  life. 

Before  we  people  our  unused  land  with  aliens  we 
should  try  to  make  it  a  home  for  American  boys  and 
girls.  There  is  need  for  a  substitute  for  the  Homestead 
Act  and  for  rural  planning  which  will  restore  to  farm 
life  the  social  and  recreative  activities  it  has  lost.  If 
we  make  it  possible  for  young  men  and  women  to  buy 
farms  large  enough  to  give  them  employment  and  a  com 
fortable  living,  if  we  recognize  the  value  of  the  farm  la 
borer  as  man  and  citizen,  we  shall  have  done  much  to 
offset  the  present  lure  of  the  city.  If  the  farm  laborer 
and  the  farmer  can  call  the  house  they  live  in,  the  trees 
they  plant,  the  grass  and  flowers  they  care  for,  their 
own  because  they  are  part  of  the  soil  which  is  theirs, 
young,  ambitious,  and  inspiring  people  will  have  some 
thing  to  work  for  and  strive  for  that  the  city  cannot 
furnish. 

We  have  reached  a  time  when  we  should  begin  to  plan 
rural  life.  Rural  development  has  been  migratory  and 
speculative  in  the  past.  In  the  foremost  countries  of 
Europe  people  on  the  farms  have  an  attachment  to  par 
ticular  farms  and  to  the  interests  of  their  particular 
neighborhoods  that  is  not  felt  in  America.  The  nations 
of  western  Europe  have  found  that  they  must  in  some 
way  enable  farm  laborers  to  own  their  homes,  and  ten 
ant  farmers  to  become  farm-owners  if  they  are  to  check 


476  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

rural  migration  and  rural  discontent.  To  achieve  this 
result,  Germany  spent  over  four  hundred  million  dollars 
between  1906  and  1914.  The  British  Government  spent 
over  five  hundred  million  dollars  between  1903  and  1914 
to  put  an  end  to  the  political  and  social  unrest  of  the 
Irish  peasant.  State  aid  has  been  actively  extended  in 
France  to  enable  the  people  of  the  country  to  own  their 
farms.  Perhaps  the  most  striking  example  of  the  value 
of  land-ownership  and  the  influence  it  exerts  in  creating 
independence,  industry,  and  contentment  is  to  be  seen 
in  Denmark,  which  fifty  years  ago  faced  the  same  situ 
ation  that  faces  us  to-day.  Copenhagen  was  then  a 
great  industrial  city  partly  surrounded  by  sand-dunes. 
The  tenant  farmer  and  the  farm  laborer  were  discour 
aged.  They  were  leaving  the  land,  flocking  to  the  fac 
tories,  or  going  to  other  countries.  The  nation  faced 
bankruptcy.  To  avert  this  disaster,  Denmark  bought 
large  estates,  sold  them  in  small  tracts  to  the  tenants 
and  farm  laborers,  helped  struggling  people  to  establish 
schools  and  cooperative  institutions,  and  thus  gave  them 
that  sense  of  security,  pride,  and  independence  that  goes 
with  the  ownership  of  farms  and  which  is  a  great  agent 
in  building  up  character,  patriotism,  and  a  strong  na 
tional  life.  Thirty  years  ago  ninety  per  cent  of  Den 
mark  was  farmed  by  tenants.  To-day  ninety  per  cent 
is  farmed  by  owners,  and  Denmark,  in  certain  features 
of  rural  life,  is  a  school  for  the  rest  of  the  world. 

Australia  is  the  eastern  frontier  of  the  white  man's 
world,  and  California  is  the  western.  Only  a  fringe  of 
the  coast  country  is  settled.  Cheap  labor  would  bring 
to  Australian  farm  owners  in\mense  and  sudden  wealth. 
But  people  of  the  Commonwealth  have  had  the  fortitude 


NEW  AGRARIAN  POLICIES  477 

and  self-denial  to  ignore  the  temptation,  to  put  aside 
immediate  gain,  in  order  to  protect  the  rights  and  op 
portunities  of  the  unborn.  They  have  chosen  slower 
material  progress  with  a  higher  human  standard.  Their 
aim  is  not  rapid  material  progress,  but  a  white  civiliza 
tion  worthy  of  the  best  traditions  of  the  mother  country. 

This  policy  was  not  adopted  to  protect  union  labor  in 
cities,  as  some  have  assumed,  though  the  labor  party  has 
always  supported  it.  The  central  idea  has  been  to  cre 
ate  a  real  economic  democracy  on  the  land.  Cheap  Asi 
atic  labor  on  the  sugar  plantations  was  done  away  with 
when  political  leaders  realized  that  white  people  would 
not  stay  if  they  had  to  compete  with  it.  The  caste  feel 
ing  created  by  Chinese  labor  existed  in  Australia  long 
after  the  coolie  had  disappeared.  It  was  shown  by  the 
intense  hatred  against  the  small  farm.  Young  men  said, 
"You  are  trying  to  make  Chinese  out  of  us."  Later, 
when  these  young  men  found  the  small  farm  the  road 
to  landed  independence,  this  prejudice  vanished. 

The  people  of  California  to-day  are  eating  Australian 
jam  grown  in  orchards  planted  by  white  settlers  who 
were  helped  by  the  Government  to  get  started  on  the 
land.  To  provide  these  farms,  in  the  last  ten  years  the 
Government  has  spent  six  hundred  million  dollars  buy 
ing  privately  owned  estates.  These  have  been  cut  up 
into  blocks  of  suitable  size,  and  thrown  open  to  settlement 
on  easy  terms  and  conditions.  The  Australian  states 
have  provided  for  cooperative  communities  and  homes  for 
farm  workers.  Between  1901  and  1918,  3,471,795  acres 
of  land  were  bought,  subdivided,  and  settled. 

Australia  has  shown  that  white  people  of  English  an 
cestry  will  do  the  squat  labor  which  we  are  told  no  one 


478  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

but  Orientals  will  do.  The  1918  Commonwealth  Year 
Book  shows  that  more  than  half  the  irrigated  farms  were 
granted  to  discharged  soldiers.  These  farms  averaged 
fifty-two  acres  each.  In  the  Sheapparter  district  of 
Victoria  there  are  255  families  where  originally  there  had 
been  twenty.  At  Cohuna  the  settlers  have  made  such 
progress  that  many  paid  in  full  for  their  land  in  seven 
years,  although  they  had  thirty-one  and  one-half  years 
in  which  to  complete  payments.  In  Koyuga  there  are 
fifty  settlers  with  good  houses,  fine  orchards,  and  fine 
crops  of  lucerne  and  vegetables,  where  in  November, 
1910,  there  was  not  a  house,  a  family,  or  an  acre  of  cul 
tivated  land.  These  impartial  records  show  that  not 
only  are  white  people  with  the  same  blood  and  traditions 
as  ourselves  doing  all  the  work  of  farm  and  gardens,  but 
that  they  are  meeting  their  payments,  living  in  better 
houses,  owning  better  stock,  and  creating  a  better  rural 
civilization  than  existed  before  the  Australian  land  policy 
went  into  effect — vastly  better  than  would  exist  if  they 
had  looked  to  Asia  for  men  to  do  the  hard  and  disagree 
able  work. 

The  time  has  come  for  us  to  show  whether  we  have  the 
same  high  regard  for  free  institutions  and  the  same  pride 
and  respect  for  the  ideal  of  our  forefathers  that  Aus 
tralia  has  shown.  If  we  have,  we  must  help  white  people 
live  on  the  land  on  farms  and  in  homes  they  own. 

California  is  the  only  American  State  that  has  made  a 
beginning  at  doing  this.  Three  years  ago  the  legislature 
appropriated  $260,000  to  test  what  could  be  done  by 
carefully-thought-out  plans  to  help  landless  poor  men 
own  farms  and  to  help  farm  laborers  secure  homes  of 
their  own.  The  money  was  advanced  not  as  a  gift,  but 


NEW  AGRARIAN  POLICIES  479 

as  a  loan,  to  be  repaid  in  fifty  years  with  four  per  cent 
interest.  Settlers  have  been  helped  by  long-time  pay 
ments  and  by  a  low  rate  of  interest  by  having  in  each 
settlement  a  friendly  capable  adviser  who  gives  to  all 
the  people  the  benefit  of  good  business  brains,  help,  and 
advice  in  cooperation  in  buying  and  selling,  in  provid 
ing  for  the  education  of  the  children,  and  in  social  ac 
tivities.  The  settlers  have  had  the  benefit  of  a  compe 
tent  architect  in  planning  their  homes,  and  as  a  result 
they  have  a  comfort,  convenience,  and  beauty  not  found 
in  an  unplanned  settlement.  The  homes  of  the  twenty- 
six  farm  laborers  win  the  enthusiastic  praise  of  every 
visitor  to  Durham.  The  children  of  these  laborers  have 
the  same  pride  in  their  homes  that  the  children  of  farm- 
owners  have  in  theirs.  There  are  no  caste  distinctions. 
The  farm  worker  and  the  farm-owner  belong  to  the  same 
social  layer. 

All  of  these  settlers  are  Americans.  They  are  doing 
every  kind  of  work  that  is  to  be  done  by  any  one  on  a 
farm  or  garden.  They  weed  onions,  milk  cows,  pitch 
hay,  and  gather  in  the  community  center  for  the  weekly 
dance.  They  are  all  working  long  hours,  living  anxious, 
self-denying  lives  in  order  to  make  and  save  the  money 
needed  to  meet  their  obligation  to  the  State ;  but  they  are 
doing  this  cheerfully  with  a  pride  and  satisfaction  which 
show  that  they  are  real  successors  of  the  pioneering 
homesteader. 

Durham  is  making  Americans  out  of  people  who,  be 
fore  they  came  to  the  settlement,  were  strangers  to  our 
institutions  and  to  one  another.  The  ancestors  of  these 
settlers  came  from  thirteen  different  countries,  but  there 
is  no  separation  on  racial  lines.  They  work  together  in 


480  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

the  cooperative  stock-breeders',  milk-sellers',  and  irriga 
tion  associations.  Pedro,  the  Spaniard,  had  been  natu 
ralized  many  years  before  he  came  to  Durham,  but  he 
had  lived  the  life  of  an  alien.  He  had  worked  on  farms, 
lived  in  a  bunk-house,  and  when  the  job  was  over  had 
gone  to  town  and  spent  his  money.  He  had  had  no  part 
in  the  social  life  of  any  community.  Now  he  owns  two 
acres  of  land.  He  does  not,  as  he  expresses  it,  "work 
around."  He  is  a  fixture,  a  permanent  part  of  the 
neighborhood  which  he  is  helping  to  build  up.  He  is 
saving  money,  and  his  savings  go  to  pay  for  his  house, 
to  plant  trees,  to  paint  his  fence,  and  to  help  build  the 
pavilion  in  the  community  center.  He  no  longer  wastes 
his  life  or  his  money  because  he  now  feels  that,  like 
St.  Paul,  "he  is  a  citizen  of  no  mean  country." 

Is  such  a  life  not  worth  striving  for?  Must  it  not 
make  for  peace  and  happiness?  Must  it  not  strengthen 
the  very  foundations  of  democracy  by  making  men  who 
to-day  are,  through  no  fault  of  their  own,  propertyless 
drifters,  stockholders  in  the  greatest  of  all  corporations, 
the  United  States  of  America?  "Would  it  not  be  the 
shrewdest  of  investments  if  the  country  were  to  plant  a 
thousand  Durhams  from  coast  to  coast  ? 

Such  an  undertaking  cannot  be  approached  with  a 
small  purse.  We  must  understand  that  world  happiness 
must  be  financed  on  the  scale  of  world  wars.  In  the 
eight  years  before  the  year  1914  Germany  did  not  hesi 
tate  to  spend  four  hundred  million  dollars  on  a  plan 
like  this.  During  the  same  period  Great  Britain  ad 
vanced  half  a  billion  dollars  to  the  peasants  of  Ireland 
for  similar  purposes.  It  requires  statesmanship  to  go 
at  it  in  this  large  way.  Have  we  the  statesmen? 


CHAPTER  30 
SHALL  EAST   WED   WEST? 

RACIAL    INTERMARRIAGE 


The  whole  difficult  and  technical  problem  of  racial 
intermarriage  must  eventually  figure  in  a  general  solu 
tion  of  the  Oriental  question.  For  the  present  it  seems 
to  be  relegated  to  the  background;  but  it  cannot  well 
be  kept  there  indefinitely.  It  is  therefore  important 
to  present  a  scientific  study  of  the  subject.  No  better 
one  is  available  than  that  made  by  Mr.  S.  J.  Holmes  of 
the  University  of  California.  Mr.  Holmes  is  one  of  the 
few  American  biologists  who  has  given  particular  at 
tention  to  the  new  science  of  eugenics.  He  is  specially 
qualified  to  deliver  an  opinion  on  the  effects  of  race  mix 
ture  and  our  national  policy  toward  it.  His  following 
study  was  presented  at  the  San  Diego  Conference  on 
Problems  of  the  Pacific. 


RACE  intermingling  is  a  subject  whose  importance  in 
relation  to  the  welfare  of  future  generations  can 
scarcely  be  overestimated.  It  is  a  subject  upon  which 
there  is  no  unanimity  even  among  those  whose  knowledge 
and  training  would  qualify  them  to  speak  with  high  as 
surance.  One  encounters  in  the  treatment  of  race  amal 
gamation  a  considerable  mass  of  prejudice  and  opinion 
that  rests  largely  on  an  emotional  basis.  Owing  to  the 
peculiar  nature  of  the  problem  dealt  with,  this  prejudice 

481 


482  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

is  not  merely  an  obstacle,  as  it  always  is,  to  the  discov 
ery  of  truth ;  it  is  an  actual  factor  in  the  problem  itself. 
Race  mingling  has  two  kinds  of  effects,  the  biological 
and  the  social.  It  will  be  expedient  to  treat  these  sepa 
rately,  although  they  have  important  interrelations. 

As  for  the  biological  effects,  we  find  two  extreme  views 
prevailing  among  laymen,  and  especially  among  those 
journalists  who  have  read  widely  in  the  popular  liter 
ature  and  in  the  older  scientific  records  about  races  and 
race  mingling.  These  two  extreme  views  are: 

1.  That  favored  by  one  school  of  anthropologists  and 
accepted  eagerly  by  most  radical  internationalists  as  a 
basis  for  their  political  beliefs;  namely,  that  the  differ 
ences  of  mentality  and  behavior  which  we  see  in  races 
are  mainly  the  result  of  environment,  not  of  heredity. 
From  this  it  follows  that  no  evil  results  ensue  from  race 
intermingling.  A  baby  taken  from  the  meanest  peasant 
woman  in  the  interior  of  China  can  be  brought  to  Cleve 
land,  Ohio,  raised  side  by  side  with  American  children 
there,  and  develop  just  as  they  do;  and  if  he  marries 
an  American  woman  when  he  grows  up,  the  children  will 
be,  in  that  environment,  good  American  children. 

2.  The  view  favored  by  a  large  number  of  students  and 
by  many  men  who  have  personally  lived  in  contact  with 
some  alien  race;  namely,  that  racial  differences  are 
hereditary  and  profound,  and  not  to  be  broken  down  by 
intermarriage  without  fearful  penalty  in  the  form  of 
mongrel  offspring  that  will  turn  out  to  be  inferior. 

The  first  view  is  held  to-day  by  thousands  of  Christian 
thinkers  and  by  the  American  liberals.  It  has  been  con 
sistently  applied  to  the  Japanese  question  in  California 
by  such  publications  as  "The  Nation,"  which  stands 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  483 

frankly  for  the  "  entire  abolition  of  race  discrimination " 
and  "the  union  of  all  peoples  in  a  world  league  in  which 
the  nations  shall  be  equal. ' ' 

The  second  view  has  been  widely  championed  in  many 
popular  books,  such  as  "The  Passing  of  the  Great  Race," 
by  Madison  Grant,  and  "The  Rising  Tide  of  Color,"  by 
Lothrop  Stoddard.  It  has  recently  been  applied  to  the 
Japanese  problem  by  Chester  W.  Rowell,  editor  of  the 
Fresno  ''Republican."  Mr.  Rowell,  writing  in  "The 
New  Republic,"  says: 

"It  is  n6t  a  question  entirely  of  economies  or  of  civilization. 
Economics  can  be  temporary,  and  we  have  already  assimilated 
civilizations  quite  as  alien  as  the  Japanese.  It  is  a  question 
of  physical  race,  and  race  is  hereditary.  It  lasts  forever. 

"The  only  real  safety  is  in  separation.  Nature  erected  a 
barrier  which  man  will  overpass  only  at  his  peril." 

Or,  as  the  editor  of  the  San  Francisco  "Bulletin"  puts 
it  with  pious  touch : 

"They  [the  Japanese]  are  a  racial  danger,  and  our  aversion 
to  assimilating  them  is  not  a  question  for  argument ;  it  is  a 
providentially  implanted  instinct  making  for  the  preservation 
of  the  white  race." 

Both  of  these  views,  when  carefully  checked  up  in  the 
light  of  modern  biological  research,  turn  out  to  be  the 
products  of  imperfect  observations  and  inaccurate  an 
alysis  of  complex  facts.  Those  who  advance  either  opin 
ion  have  not  grasped  the  extraordinary  difficulty  of  de 
ciding  in  any  given  case  whether  a  characteristic  which 
we  call  racial  is  "in  the  blood"  or  is  a  matter  of  up 
bringing. 

The  solution  of  the  biological  problems  of  race  mixture 


484  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

is  rendered  peculiarly  difficult  by  lying  outside  the 
sphere  of  feasible  experimental  attack,  and  by  our  fre 
quent  inability  to  distinguish  the  effects  of  heredity  from 
those  of  environment.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that 
we  find  the  opinions  of  many  writers  on  the  subject  based 
more  on  the  effects  of  inbreeding  and  cross-breeding  in 
lower  forms,  where  it  is  possible  to  come  to  definite  con 
clusions  by  controlled  experimentation,  than  by  the  ac 
tual  investigation  of  the  problem  in  the  human  species. 
Research  is  making  it  more  and  more  evident  that  the 
laws  of  heredity  which  obtain  among  plants  and  animals 
are  followed  also  in  the  transmission  of  human  traits, 
and  the  biologist  therefore  turns  to  the  lower  organisms 
for  light  upon  the  problem  of  race  mixture  in  man. 

When  we  study  inbreeding  and  cross-breeding  in  lower 
forms,  however,  we  meet  with  quite  varied  results.  Al 
though  progress  in  their  interpretation  has  been  made 
since  the  rediscovery  of  Mendel's  law,  several  questions 
of  prime  importance  still  remain  obscure.  The  mass 
of  observational  and  experimental  data  collected  by 
Darwin  in  his  work  on  the  "  Variation  of  Animals  and 
Plants  Under  Domestication,"  seemed  to  demonstrate 
overwhelmingly  that  the  crossing  of  distinct,  but  closely 
related,  varieties  of  plants  and  animals  produced  as  a 
rule  progeny  of  enhanced  vigor.  He  says : 

"When  we  consider  the  various  facts  now  given  which 
plainly  show  that  good  follows  from  crossing,  and*  less  plainly 
that  evil  follows  from  close  interbreeding,  and  when  we  bear 
in  mind  that  throughout  the  organic  world  elaborate  provision 
has  been  made  for  the  occasional  union  of  distinct  individuals, 
the  evidence  of  a  great  law  of  nature  is,  if  not  proved,  at  least 
rendered  in  the  highest  degree  probable ;  namely  that  the  cix)ss- 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  485 

ing  of  animals  and  plants  which  are  not  closely  related  to  each 
other  is  highly  beneficial  or  even  necessary,  and  that  inter 
breeding  prolonged  during  many  generations  is  highly  injuri 
ous." 

Since  the  publication  of  Darwin's  work  this  general 
conclusion  has  been  confirmed  by  a  large  amount  of  addi 
tional  data.  To  take  but  a  single  illustration  from  the 
breeding  of  corn.  The  work  of  Shull  and  that  of  East 
and  Hays  has  shown  that  varieties  of  corn  kept  from  the 
access  of  foreign  pollen  produced  in  general  a  marked 
decrease  of  yield  in  successive  generations.  However, 
when  two  such  inbred  strains  were  crossed,  there  followed 
an  increase  of  yield  in  striking  excess  of  the  produce  of 
either  parental  stock.  Thus  two  inbred  varieties  of 
Learning  dent,  each  yielding  about  two  bushels  per  acre, 
produced,  when  crossed,  a  variety  yielding  about  24.5 
bushels  per  acre.  The  first,  or  Fl,  generation  of  such 
crosses  was  found  to  be  more  productive  than  the  second, 
or  F2,  generation,  as  one  would  naturally  expect.  The 
heterozygous,  or  mixed,  state  in  corn  is  apparently,  there 
fore,  a  condition  of  maximum  productivity.  It  is  well 
known  that  crosses  between  types  which  are  distantly 
related  often  give  rise,  when  they  produce  any  offspring 
at  all,  to  sterile  or  partially  sterile  progeny;  but  it  is 
not  rare  also  for  quite  closely  related  races  to  produce 
inferior  or  relatively  infertile  strains.  And  it  must  be 
remembered  that  many  plants  which  are  normally  self- 
fertilizing,  such  as  our  common  garden  peas  and  beans, 
may  reproduce  without  deterioration  for  an  indefinite 
period. 

Breeders  of  animals  have  long  been  persuaded  that 
close  inbreeding,  although  advantageous  for  the  perpetu- 


486  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

ation  or  enhancement  of  desired  qualities,  brings  about 
in  course  of  time  a  deterioration  which  must  be  checked 
by  an  occasional  infusion  of  foreign  blood.  But  recent 
experimental  work  in  animal  breeding  has  placed  the 
matter  in  a  light  quite  different  from  that  in  which  it 
was  formerly  regarded.  It  is  true  that  inbreeding  is 
sometimes  productive  of  undesirable  results,  but  it  is 
also  true  that  in  some  animals  it  may  be  carried  on  with 
impunity  for  a  large  number  of  generations.  In  the 
recently  carefully  controlled  investigations  of  Miss  King 
on  albino  rats,  to  take  but  one  example,  it  was  proved 
that  the  closest  inbreeding — namely  brother  and  sister 
matings — carried  for  twenty-five  generations  failed  to 
cause  any  deterioration  in  growth,  vigor  or  fertility. 

The  results  of  inbreeding  in  animals,  as  in  plants,  are 
sometimes  bad,  sometimes  good,  and  often  indifferent, 
and  the  influence  of  cross-breeding  is  good,  bad,  or  in 
different,  depending  upon  the  particular  strains  be 
tween  which  crosses  are  made.  When  we  inquire  con 
cerning  the  causes  of  these  diverse  results,  we  may  derive 
some  very  probable  explanations  from  Mendel's  law  of 
inheritance.  Most  Mendelians  would  now  concede,  as 
several  writers  contended  before  Mendel's  law  became 
generally  known,  that  inbreeding  per  se  is  in  no  wise 
injurious,  but  that  it  may  become  so  if  both  parents  are 
bearers  of  latent  or  recessive  characteristics  of  an  un 
desirable  kind.  In  other  words,  inbreeding  does  not  ere- 
'^•*ate  defects,  but  it  affords  a  condition  by  which  latent 
M  defects  ma/y  be  brought  to  light.  Heterozygosis  covers  a 
multitude  of  imperfections;  an  unusually  heterozygous 
species,  like  Indian  corn,  may  keep  up  appearance  by  vir 
tue  of  its  mixed  state  and  fail  to  reveal  its  recessive 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  487 

weaknesses.  But  as  continued  inbreeding  makes  a  stock 
more  and  more  homozygous,  or  uniform  in  its  germinal 
constitution,  it  may  come  to  manifest  more  and  more  re 
cessive  traits  that  are  productive  of  deterioration. 

Viewed  in  this  manner,  the  varied  effects  of  inbreed 
ing  and  cross-breeding  may  be  regarded  as  having  their 
basis  in  the  varied  segregations  and  combinations  of 
Mendelian  factors.  This  conclusion,  if  valid,  marks  a 
distinct  gain  in  our  insight  into  the  problem  under  dis 
cussion.  Knowledge  of  the  hereditary  constitution  of 
parent  stocks  will  enable  us  to  predict  with  considerable 
probability  the  outcome  of  a  given  mating.  With  sound 
stock,  the  results  of  inbreeding  are  usually  sound.  And 
ivith  a  stock  carrying  recessive  defects,  the  process  of 
inbreeding  is  very  apt  bo  result  in  deterioration. 

The  effects  of  inbreeding  in  man  are  in  accord  with 
this  conclusion.  We  find  imbecility,  deafness,  insanity, 
and  various  other  defects  arising  in  families  which  result 
from  consanguineous  matings.  The  kind  of  traits 
brought  out  through  inbreeding  are  found  to  vary  greatly 
in  different  stocks,  as  we  would  expect  according  to  the 
interpretation  just  mentioned.  Davenport,  in  speaking 
of  different  inbred  communities,  says : 

"Consanguinity  on  Martha's  Vineyard  results  in  11  per  cent, 
deaf  mutes  and  a  number  of  hermaphrodites;  in  Point  Judith 
in  13  per  cent,  idiocy  and  7  per  cent,  insanity ;  in  an  island  off 
the  Maine  Coast  the  consequence  is  intellectual  dullness;  in 
Block  Island  loss  of  fecundity;  in  some  of  the  'Banks'  off  the 
coast  of  North  Carolina,  suspiciousness  and  an  inability  to  pass 
beyond  the  third  or  fourth  year  of  school;  in  a  peninsula  on 
the  east  coast  of  Chesapeake  Bay  the  defect  is  dwarf  ness  (G. 
A.  Penrose,  1905).  There  is  no  one  trait  that  results  from 


488  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

the  marriage  of  kin;  the  result  is  determined  by  the  specific 
defect  in  the  germ  plasm  of  the  common  ancestor." 

In  contrast  to  such  effects  as  these  we  have  numerous 
cases  in  which  consanguineous  matings  have  resulted  in 
no  noticeable  deterioration,  and  several  instances  in 
which  they  have  been  followed  by  very  desirable  results. 
A  well-known  illustration  is  furnished  by  the  family  of 
Charles  Darwin.  Darwin  married  his  first  cousin,  Emma 
Wedgewood,  and  of  his  four  sons  three  became  fellows 
of  the  Royal  Society,  while  the  other,  Leonard  Darwin, 
has  won  a  noteworthy  position  as  a  writer  on  economics 
and  eugenics.  Consanguineous  marriages  tend  to  con 
serve  valuable  combinations  of  hereditary  traits,  and  if 
wisely  made,  they  would  lead  to  the  perpetuation  of  the 
most  valuable  types  of  humanity.  The  marriages  most 
important  to  society  are  those  of  the  best  with  the  best. 
Where  the  best  mates  with  the  worst  there  is  a  dissipa 
tion  and  waste  of  good  inheritance,  and  where  the  worst 
mates  with  worst,  the  progeny,  other  things  equal,  are 
in  every  way  undesirable  and  tend  to  become  eliminated 
through  the  process  of  natural  selection. 

Inbreeding,  therefore,  should  not  be  indiscriminately 
condemned  on  account  of  the  ill  effects  which  occasion 
ally  follow  from  it.  Combinations  of  germ  plasms  which 
are  bad  enough  to  lead  to  the  elimination  of  individu- 
alisms  which  arise  from  them  are  by  no  means  an  un 
mixed  evil.  They  tend  to  purge  the  race  of  hereditary 
factors  which,  if  disseminated  in  the  general  population, 
would  give  rise  to  a  general  lowering  of  our  racial  in 
heritance. 

When  we  pass  on  to  consider  the  complementary  sub 
jects  of  cross-breeding  in  man,  we  should  bear  in  mind 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  489 

the  dangers  of  basing  conclusions  upon  what  occur* 
among  lower  forms.  There,  as  we  have  seen,  the  results 
are  exceedingly  varied,  some  crosses  being  superior  in 
vigor  to  either  parent  stock,  while  others  are  but  puny 
runts,  which  perpetuate  themselves  with  difficulty,  if  at 
all.  The  opponents  as  well  as  the  proponents  of  racial 
amalgamation  find  abundant  support  for  their  conten 
tion  by  an  appeal  to  analogy.  But  whatever  side  of  the 
question  is  most  strongly  supported  by  such  arguments, 
the  only  evidence  upon  which  much  reliance  can  be  placed 
must  be  yielded  by  a  comparison  of  the  products  of  race 
mixture  with  the  pure-bred  stocks  from  which  they  arose. 
"When  one  goes  over  the  literature  on  this  subject  and 
endeavors  to  select  what  is  not  rendered  entirely  worth 
less  by  defective  observation  or  race  prejudice,  he  finds 
a  bewildering  variety  of  judgments. 

Consider  the  frequently  quoted  opinion  of  Louis  Agas- 
siz  on  the  Brazilian  cross-breeds : 

"Let  any  one  who  doubts  the  evil  of  this  mixture  of  races 
and  is  inclined  from  mistaken  philanthropy  to  break  down  all 
barriers  between  them,  come  to  Brazil.  He  cannot  deny  the 
deterioration  consequent  upon  the  amalgamation  of  races,  more 
widespread  here  than  in  other  country  in  the  world  and  which 
is  rapidly  effacing  the  best  qualities  of  the  white  man,  the 
negro,  and  the  Indian,  leaving  a  mongrel  nondescript  type, 
deficient  in  physical  and  mental  energy." 

Mr.  Schultze,  in  his  book,  "Race  or  Mongrel?"  speak 
ing  of  the  race  mixture  in  Peru,  tells  us : 

"The  degeneration  there  is  even  greater  and  has  been  more 
rapid  than  in  the  other  South  American  countries  and  the 
cause  is  the  infusion  of  Chinese  blood  into  the  veins  of  the 
white-negro-Indian  compound.  There  are  scarcely  any  Indo- 


490  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

Europeans  of  pure  blood  in  Peru,  for  with  the  exception  of 
pure  Indians  in  the  interior,  the  population  consists  of  mesti 
zos,  Mulattoes,  Zambos,  terceroons,  quadroons,  cholos,  musties, 
fustics  and  yellows;  crosses  between  Spaniards  and  Indians, 
Spaniards  and  negroes,  Spaniards  and  yellows ;  crosses  between 
mongrels  of  one  kind  and  mongrels  of  other  kinds.  All  kinds 
of  crossbreeds  infest  the  land.  The  result  is  incredible  rotten 
ness." 

Similar  conditions,  according  to  the  author,  prevail  in 
South  America,  in  general,  as  well  as  in  Mexico,  Central 
America,  and  the  West  Indies.  Schultze,  in  this  book, 
which  is  a  tirade  against  race  mixture  the  world  over, 
attributed  the  downfall  of  most  great  civilizations  of  the 
past  to  racial  hybridization:  " Promiscuous  crossings 
destroyed  the  Hindoos,  the  Egyptians,  the  Greeks,  the 
Romans,  and  the  Lombards,"  he  declares,  and  according 
to  him,  it  is  only  the  pure  races  that  have  been  leaders 
in  civilization.  More  recently,  Mr.  Madison  Grant  has 
expressed  the  opinion  that  the  product  of  race  mixture 
is  usually  on  the  same  level  as  the  inferior  race,  and 
that  race-crossing  therefore  can  bring  about  only  dete 
rioration. 

It  would  be  easy  to  fill  pages  with  vituperations  which 
have  been  poured  out  upon  the  mixed  races.  It  is 
equally  easy  to  fill  pages  with  accounts  of  the  alleged 
racial  benefits  of  amalgamation.  The  sociologist  Novi- 
cow  sings  the  praises  of  miscegenation  as  loudly  as  others 
have  condemned  it.  He  tells  us : 

"It  is  recognized  that  a  race  deteriorates  by  consanguineous 
union  and  that  it  is  improved  by  crossings.  Crossings  are  in 
dispensable  to  sustain  and  augment  the  vigor  of  a  race.  They 
are  of  a  utility  so  incontestable  that  they  should  be  augmented 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  491 

as  much  as  possible.  In  our  time,  many  societies,  civilized  as 
well  as  barbarous,  seek  to  avoid  a  mixture  with  other  groups. 
But  they  bring  upon  themselves  the  worst  of  evils,  the  degra 
dation  of  the  race." 

It  is  well  known  that  most  cultivated  peoples  repre 
sent  a  mixture  of  several  ethnic  stocks,  and  an  inquiry 
into  the  ancestry  of  men  eminent  for  intellectual  achieve 
ments  shows  that  they  are  very  frequently  of  mixed 
ethnic  origin.  Few  indeed  have  resulted  from  combin 
ing  such  diverse  races  as  the  black,  yellow,  and  white, 
but  it  is  common  to  find  in  their  ancestry  combinations 
of  such  groups  as  the  Celts,  Scandinavians,  Anglo-Sax 
ons,  and  various  Nordic  and  Alpine  and  Mediterranean 
stocks.  Within  the  limits  of  the  better  subdivisions  of 
the  white  race  there  is  no  evidence  that  crossing  is  pro 
ductive  of  the  least  deterioration.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  has  never  been  proved  that  such  crosses  tend  to  be 
superior  to  the  relatively  pure  products  of  either  com 
ponent  stock.  But  what  can  be  said  of  the  combination 
of  such  races  as  the  Caucasian  and  negro,  the  negro  and 
the  Mongolian,  or  the  Polynesians  and  the  American  In 
dians? 

It  must  be  admitted  that  so  far  as  physical  vigor  and 
fecundity  are  concerned,  many  of  such  extreme  crosses 
have  shown  no  evidence  of  falling  below  the  average  of 
either  parental  stock.  The  Rehboter  hybrids  between  the 
Boers  and  Hottentots  in  South  Africa  are  described  by 
Fisher,  who  has  made  a  careful  and  thorough  study  of 
these  people,  as  a  healthy,  vigorous,  and  prolific  stock. 
Boas  says  that  observation  of  half-breed  Indians  shows 
that  a  type  taller  than  either  parental  race  develops  in 
the  mixed  blood,  that  the  fertility  of  the  mixed  blood 


492  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

is  unexcelled,  and  that  he  cannot  find  any  evidence  that 
would  corroborate  the  view  so  often  expressed  that  the 
hybrid  tends  to  degenerate. 

The  Anglo-Polynesian  inhabitants  of  Pitcairn  and  Nor 
folk  Islands,  who  sprang  originally  from  a  group  of  nine 
Englishmen,  six  Tahitian  men,  and  fifteen  Tahitian 
women,  gave  rise  by  1905  to  a  healthy  and  flourishing 
population  of  1059  persons.  Many  writers  have  praised 
the  physical  beauty  of  hybrid  stocks  in  various  parts  of 
the  world.  Hoffman  has  described  the  Anglo-Chinese 
hybrids  as  people  of  good  physique  and  mentality. 
There  is  abundant  evidence  that  mulattoes,  so  far  as 
mental  development  goes,  are  considerably  superior  to 
the  full-blooded  negro,  though  many  observers  are  con 
vinced  that  the  mulattoes  are  physically  inferior  to  both 
blacks  and  whites,  and  this  opinion  is  supported  by  the 
measurements  of  numerous  recruits  during  the  Civil 
War;  but  the  claim  that  the  mulattoes  are  relatively 
infertile  and  tend  to  die  out  in  a  few  generations  is  not 
based  on  adequate  data. 

An  impartial  survey  of  available  evidence  leads  us  to 
infer  that  with  the  exception  of  the  probably  inferior 
physique  of  the  mulatto,  the  mixture  of  even  the  most  dis 
tinct  races  is  not  in  itself  productive  of  degeneracy 
either  physically  or  mentally.  Crosses  of  superior  with 
inferior  races  may  be  below  the  level  of  the  superior 
race,  but  this  is  owing  to  the  admixture  of  inferior 
blood  and  not  to  race  fusion  per  se.  There  is  no  ade 
quate  evidence  that  the  products  of  the  admixture  of 
races  of  approximately  the  same  degree  of  development 
are  biologically  inferior  to  either  race.  Neither  can  we " 
say,  on  the  whole,  that  these  mixtures  exhibit  any  marked 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  493 

degree  of  superiority.  There  may  be,  of  course,  certain 
combinations  of  traits  that  may  be  desirable.  But  ob 
servation  does  not  justify  the  assertion  that  in  general 
the  gains  outweigh  the  losses.  What  we  know  of  the  re 
sults  of  race-crossing  in  men  fails  to  show  any  illustra 
tions  tof  that  conspicuous  benefit  that  sometimes  follows 
the  crossing  of  related  varieties  of  plants  and  animals. 
"We  have  no  analogue  of  the  Burbank  walnut,  which 
greatly  surpasses  both  its  parent  species  in  growth  and 
vigor. 

It  may  be  that  careful  study  will  show  that  there 
are  certain  races  and  peoples  whose  blood  can  be  min 
gled  with  great  advantage.  But  it  would  we  unwise,  in 
the  light  of  our  present  knowledge,  to  advocate  a  gen 
eral  amalgamation  of  races  even  on  purely  biological 
grounds.  Race  mingling  is  going  on  rapidly  enough  as 
it  is,  and  it  ivould  be  a  part  of  prudence  to  study  more 
closely  just  how  it  is  working  out  before  adopting  the 
questionable  policy  of  accelerating  this  process.  A  race 
of  superior  inheritance  has  little  to  gain  and  very  much 
to  lose  by  mingling  its  blood  with  that  of  an  inferior 
people.  There  may  be  races  of  lower  cultural  level  than 
others  which  carry  an  inheritance  as  good  or  better  than 
the  so-called  superior  races.  The  mingling  of  such  races 
may  be  advantageous  biologically  and  eventually  from  a 
cultural  point  of  view,  also;  but  before  racial  fusion 
can  be  advocated,  it  should  be  shown  that  the  less-de 
veloped  race  is  of  equal  worth  with  the  more  advanced 
one  in  native  quality.  We  should  not  be  compelled  to 
prove  the  native  inferiority  of  the  more  backward  race. 
The  burden  of  proof  should  rest  upon  those  who  uphold 
the  doctrine  of  essential  race  equality  to  establish  the 


4,94  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

fact  that  races  are  essentially  equal  in  their  inherited  en 
dowments  before  advocating  the  intermarriage  of  distinct 
races  of  mankind. 

The  verdict  which  we  believe  the  cautious  biologist  is 
compelled  to  give  is  that,  in  the  light  of  our  present 
knowledge,  or  perhaps  we  should  say  our  present  igno 
rance,  it  is  not  advisable  for  a  people  of  superior  inheri 
tance  and  proved  accomplishments  to  fuse  with  a  dis 
tinct  alien  race.  Race-fusion  for  us  is  a  dangerous  ex 
periment.  But  while  it  is  possible  that  in  regard  to  mis 
cegenation  with  certain  alien  races,  future  research  may 
remove  some  of  our  ground  for  apprehension,  our  wisest 
course  at  present  is  the  maintenance  of  racial  integrity. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  considering  the  mixture  of 
races  as  a  purely  biological  problem.  We  must  now  dis 
cuss  briefly  the  social  aspects  of  miscegenation  not  merely 
because  of  their  great  importance,  but  because  the  biolog 
ical  results  are  in  a  measure  dependent  upon  social  causes. 
Race-mingling  commonly  occurs  extensively  between  rela 
tively  inferior  representatives  of  both  races.  This  seems 
to  be  especially  the  case  in  the  union  of  white  and  blacks 
in  the  United  States,  as  has  been  shown  by  Mr.  Hoffman 
in  his  study  of  the  American  negro.  Pride  of  caste  and 
position  keeps  races  pure.  And  those  who  occupy  the 
lower  strata  of  society  are  more  likely  to  contract  unions 
with  the  members  of  the  less  cultivated  race.  Social 
causes,  therefore,  determine,  to  a  certain  degree  at  least, 
the  type  of  marriage  selection  that  occurs  in  interracial 
unions,  and  hence,  to  a  certain  degree  also,  the  biological 
effects  of  miscegenation.  Illegitimate  unions  between  in 
ferior  races  and  the  better  stock  of  the  superior  race  are 
a  not  infrequent  result  of  race  contact.  The  products  of 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  495 

such  unions  may  be  biologically  sound,  but  they  are  apt 
to  occupy  an  uncertain  social  status  and  to  prove  unde 
sirable  additions  to  society. 

The  social  effects  of  miscegenation  vary  greatly  from 
country  to  country.  In  large  parts  of  South  America 
it  is  no  discredit  to  be  a  mongrel.  Where  pride  of  race 
is  lost,  and  where  there  is  an  indiscriminate  mingling 
of  races,  we  usually  find  a  backward  people,  devoid  of 
enterprise  and  lacking  in  high  intellectual  activities.  If 
we  explain  the  shortcomings  of  the  cross-breed  as  a  prod 
uct  of  his  unfavorable  social  environment,  we  can  only 
defend  miscegenation  by  advocating  the  suppression  of 
those  sentiments  and  reactions  which  make  human  beings 
recoil  from  intimacy  with  human  creatures  who  look,  act, 
talk,  or  smell  differently  from  their  own  kind.  The  feel 
ings  which  keep  people  from  accepting  all  races  on  equal 
terms  are  very  deep-seated  traits  of  human  nature.  It 
is,  perhaps,  possible  that  by  the  proper  education  from 
early  childhood  these  feelings  might  be  largely  overcome. 
If  such  a  transformation  could  be  effected,  it  is  uncertain 
how  it  might  react  upon  the  development  of  those  higher 
and  finer  traits  of  human  nature  whose  cultivation  we 
highly  prize. 

But  leaving  this  psychological  question  aside,  we  must 
face  the  practical  difficulty  that,  however  desirable  it 
might  be  to  abolish  the  feelings  of  race  antagonism, 
our  efforts  in  this  direction  would  meet  with  a  rather 
large  amount  of  obstinate  opposition.  We  must  take 
human  nature  as  we  find  it  and  deal  with  it  accord 
ingly.  We  may  tell  our  neighbor  that  he  should  not 
cherish  any  unreasonable  sentiments  against  the  marriage 
of  his  daughter  with  a  Polynesian  or  a  native  of  Sene- 


496  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

gambia,  but  our  neighbor  would  probably  be  little  moved 
by  our  counsel,  and  even  though  we  might  oppose  a  log 
ical  refutation  of  all  his  objections  to  the  match,  he 
would  doubtless  retain  a  residue  of  sentiment — sheer 
prejudice  we  may  call  it — which  no  argument  could  dis 
lodge.  He  might  in  turn  tell  me  that  I  should  have  no 
scruples  about  eating  human  flesh,  that  such  food  is 
highly  nutritious  and  easily  digestible  if  properly  pre 
pared,  and  that  it  is  poor  economy  in  these  days  of  ex 
pensive  living  not  to  avail  ourselves  of  this  natural  re 
source.  But  if  he  were  to  refute  completely  all  the  ob 
jections  I  might  offer,  I  am  quite  sure  that  my  unfounded 
squeamishneess  would  effectually  deter  me  from  the  prac 
tice  of  feasting  off  the  dear  remains  of  my  esteemed 
contemporaries. 

There  are,  or  have  been,  many  peoples  who  felt  about 
this  matter  of  diet  quite  differently  from  what  I  do. 
There  are  also  people  who  have  no  particular  sentiments 
against  indiscriminate  miscegenation.  After  all,  one 
might  claim,  it  is  merely  a  matter  of  taste,  and  what  we 
should  do  is  to  break  down  those  barriers  of  prejudice 
which  prevent  race-mingling  and  help  to  bring  about  a 
period  of  universal  brotherhood  and  peace  by  the  free 
intermarriage  of  the  peoples  of  the  earth. 

There  are  many  to  whom  such  a  Utopian  scheme  has 
made  a  strong  appeal.  Against  it  may  be  urged  not 
only  the  dangers  of  such  a  proceeding  on  biological 
grounds,  but  a  number  of  considerations  which  show  that 
such  an  attempt  would  be  socially  undesirable,  if  not 
disastrous.  We  find,  as  a  matter  of  experience,  that  the 
mongrelization  of  humanity  is  accompanied  only  too  fre 
quently  by  the  demoralization  of  social  consciousness, 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  497 

the  promotion  of  internal  discord  and  political  corrup 
tion,  moral  laxity,  and  the  development  of  vice  and  crime. 
Peoples  that  result  from  the  mixture  of  distinct  races 
have  seldom,  if  ever,  risen  to  great  heights  of  intellec 
tual  achievement;  and  any  nation  which  incorporates  a 
considerable  measure  of  the  blood  of  an  alien  race,  if 
we  may  judge  from  the  lessons  of  history,  is  destined  to 
decadence.  It  is  essential  for  the  welfare  of  a  nation 
such  as  ours,  which  already  contains  a  large  amount  of 
hereditary  diversity  in  its  population  and  is  in  no  dan 
ger  of  becoming  ultra  rigid  through  inbreeding,  to  keep 
itself  free  from  the  admixtures  of  distinct  racial  stock. 
Our  problems  of  assimilation  are  sufficiently  taxing  now 
unthout  our  adding  to  them.  The  more  diverse  the  racial 
elements  that  come  to  our  shores,  the  slower  their  assimi 
lation.  The  more  trying  and  tense  become  their  relations 
to  our  populations,  the  more  amalgamation  becomes  rele 
gated  to  the  relatively  ill  favored  of  our  race,  the  more 
undesirable  is  the  status  of  the  cross-breed  and  the  more 
the  hybrid  population  tends  to  sink  in  the  social  scale. 

It  may  be  urged  that  many  of  these  ill  effects  are  the 
result  of  race  prejudice.  Be  it  so.  Race  prejudice  is  a 
very  real  thing;  it  is  quite  possible  that  it  has  important 
and  valuable  functions.  It  has  served  to  keep  races  pure. 
And  for  a  superior  race  to  keep  pure  is  a  very  important 
condition  for  the  maintenance  of  its  culture,  as  well  as 
the  most  distinguishing  virtues  of  its  biological  inheri 
tance. 

As  long  as  a  people  preserves  its  high  endowments  and 
avoids  the  fate  of  decadence  which  has  so  often  overtaken 
peoples  in  the  past,  the  maintenance  of  its  integrity  is 
not  only  a  right,  but  an  imperative  duty. 


498  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

In  saying  this,  we  do  not  condemn  race-crossing  in 
general  or  on  principle.  Race-mingling  affords  a  fruit 
ful  source  of  variability  for  the  operation  of  natural  se 
lection,  and  it  has  doubtless  been  an'-  important  factor  in 
the  relatively  rapid  evolution  of  man  from  his  animal 
ancestry.  Among  races  of  approximately  equal  endow 
ment  it  may  confer  a  number  of  advantages,  but  it  is 
also  a  source  of  danger.  In  the  light  of  our  present 
knowledge  of  how  particular  crosses  work  out  not  only  in 
the  first  generation,  but  in  subsequent  ones,  the  wisest 
counsel  for  a  superior  people  in  regard  to  race-mixture  is 
to  go  slow  and  to  play  safe. 

The  bearing  of  all  this  upon  the  Japanese  question  is 
now  clear ;  it  may  be  summed  up  thus : 

1.  While  it  is  probable  that  the  peculiar  virtues  and 
abilities  of  the  Japanese  people  who  have  come  to  Hawaii 
and  California  depend  largely  upon  inheritance,  we  are 
as  yet  ignorant  of  the  extent  to  which  they  are  the  prod 
ucts  of  past  environmental  conditions  such  as  climate, 
food,  working  conditions,  political  customs,  religion,  and 
culture   prevailing  for   many   centuries  in   Japan.     It 
would  be  desirable  to  have  more  definite  knowledge  of 
the  inborn  capacities  of  the  Japanese  before  attempting 
to  infer  what  would  probably  be  the  result  of  crossing 
with  racial  stocks  living  in  America. 

2.  There  is  no  trustworthy  evidence  at  hand  to  show 
whether  a  cross-breeding  of  Japanese  with  various  Euro 
pean  stocks  results  in  a  higher  or  in  a  lower  human  type. 
And  yet  it  is  important  to  learn  the  facts  of  this  matter 
before  race  mixture  gets  out  of  hand. 

3.  In  view  of  these  uncertainties,  and  on  account  of  the 
great  harm  that  might  arise  from  ill-considered  action, 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  499 

it  would  be  best  both  for  America  and  for  Japan  to  take 
the  prudent  course  and  check  the  possibilities  of  exten 
sive  race  mingling  until  both  countries  have  made  an  ade 
quate  scientific  study  of  its  effects. 

4.  Such  a  study  can  be  made  in  Hawaii  and  in  Cali 
fornia,  where  the  number  of  Japanese  is  great  enough  to 
facilitate  observations  and  to  give  weight  to  statistics 
based  upon  them.     Opportunities  will  doubtless  be  af 
forded  here  or  elsewhere  for  studying  the  issue  of  matings 
between  the  better-endowed  representatives  of  the  Japa 
nese  and  whites ;  it  would  be  unfair  to  base  general  con 
clusions  on  observations  limited  to  the  unions  of  the  in 
ferior  members  of  the  two  races. 

5.  But  quite  aside  from  the  results  of  race  fusion  per 
se,  the  products  of  mixed  marriages  depend  to  a  consid 
erable  extent  upon  the  type  of  marriage  selection  which 
takes  place.     This  matter  should  be  studied  also,  so  that 
we  may  be  able  to  forecast  with  some  degree  of  accuracy 
what  types  of  mating  would  be  most  likely  to  result  from 
more  extensive  race  contact.     If  we  should  obtain  a  pre 
ponderance  of  cross-breeds  of  inferior  parentage,  a  result 
which  experience  with  race-mixtures  indicates  would  be 
quite  likely  to  happen,  there  would  be  a  further  argu 
ment  against  the  union  of  Japanese  and  Americans. 

EVILS   IN   THE   BIRTH-RATE 

In  the  meeting  of  Orientals  and  Occidentals,  the 
birth-rate  of  the  two  races  inevitably  forces  itself  upon 
our  attention.  The  biological  fortunes  of  any  race  de 
pend  upon  what  is  sometimes  called  its  net  fecundity,  or 
its  natural  rate  of  increase.  The  crude  birth-rate  is,  of 
course,  only  one  factor  in  the  increase  of  populations; 


500  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

countries  that  now  show  the  highest  birth-rate,  as  Mr. 
Thompson  has  pointed  out,  are  those  which  increase  the 
most  slowly,  if  at  all.  The  real  rate  of  increase  is  deter 
mined  by  the  excess  of  births  over  deaths.  And  among 
many  countries  in  which  the  birth-rate  is  low  the  death- 
rate  has  been  reduced  so  much  faster  relatively  that  the 
natural  rate  of  increase  has  become  greater  than  it  was  a 
few  years  ago.  In  other  words,  many  countries  with  low 
birth-rates  are  those  which  are  now  multiplying  most 
rapidly. 

In  considering  these  facts  we  must,  of  course,  also 
reckon  with  the  influence  of  war  and  conquest.  Peoples 
expand  as  a  result  of  successful  conflicts.  We  are  prone 
to  look  upon  the  conquering  race  as  the  expanding  race. 
We  may  cite  examples  of  the  rapid  spread  of  the  Mon 
golians  and  the  Anglo-Saxons  by  successful  warfare 
which  removes  the  obstacles  to  territorial  expansion. 
But  whatever  war  may  do  for  a  people,  its  biological 
function  is  for  the  most  part  nullified  if  it  does  not  lead 
to  an  enhanced  birth-rate.  Where  conquests  do  not  lead 
to  the  acquisition  of  territory  in  which  they  may  multiply 
with  increased  rapidity,  or  to  acquiring  advantages  which 
may  lead  a  country  through  developing  its  own  industry 
to  support  a  larger  population,  they  are  fruitless  victories 
from  the  biological  point  of  view,  however  important  they 
may  be  in  other  respects.  The  biological  influence  of 
war  is  determined  by  its  effect  on  the  birth-rate,  quan 
titatively  and  qualitatively. 

But  the  curious  thing  about  recent  wars  is  that  the  vic 
torious  nations  have  commonly  failed  to  reap  any  biolog 
ical  benefits.  They  have  not  utilized  victory  so  as  to 
enhance  their  birth-rate.  Formerly  peoples,  like  the 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  501 

Children  of  Israel,  secured  through  extermination  of  their 
enemies  a  real  biological  advantage.  Where  native  pop 
ulations  have  been  pushed  aside  by  the  invading  white 
man,  victory  has  meant  racial  expansion.  But  the  bril 
liant  victories  of  Napoleon  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
which  brought  to  France  much  power  and  prestige, 
merely  depleted  her  stock  and  drained  her  of  her  best 
blood.  And  had  she  been  victorious  in  the  Franco-Prus 
sian  War,  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  she  would 
have  increased  much  in  population,  because  her  birth 
rate  had  been  falling  since  nearly  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  On  the  other  hand,  Austria  has 
been  defeated  in  almost  every  war  in  which  she  has  en 
gaged,  but  has  steadily  increased  in  population  and  in 
military  power,  while  her  old-time  victorious  rival  has 
relatively  lost  ground. 

And  to  take  another  illustration,  the  Poles,  who  have 
suffered  successive  defeats  and  loss  of  territory  until  the 
final  complete  partition  of  their  country  among  their 
enemies  have  kept  up  a  rapid  birth-rate,  which  has 
proved  a  sore  trial  to  their  conquerors.  Defeat  caused 
the  extinction  of  Poland  as  a  nation, — it  may  do  so 
again, — but  it  has  not  greatly  diminished  the  number  of 
Poles  or  their  rate  of  multiplication.  Likewise,  we  find 
that  defeat,  exile,  and  oppression  has  failed  to  extin 
guish  the  Jew,  who  has  cherished  the  traditions  of  a 
high  birth-rate  and  tribal  integrity  from  remote  an 
tiquity. 

It  is  often  the  defeated  people  who  win  the  biological 
victory  <or  the  real  victory  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
It  is  often  the  victorious  who  go  down  to  defeat  and  de 
cadence.  From  the  point  of  view  of  'biology  there  is  no 


502  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

sense  in  defeating  a  nation  and  then  allowing  it  to  out- 
breed  its  victors. 

All  this  has  a  vital  bearing  on  the  meeting  of  Orient 
als  and  Occidentals.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  this  encoun 
ter  of  the  races  may  always  be  friendly.  But  contacts 
are  bound  to  become  more  numerous  and  intimate  as  the 
years  go  on,  and  we  should  not  fail  to  consider  the  pos 
sible,  if  not  probable,  occurrence  of  armed  conflict  in  the 
not  distant  future.  The  tendency  of  both  peoples  to  ex 
pand  will  present  in  various  forms  many  difficult  situ 
ations  that  may  lead  to  war.  And  in  any  war  growing 
out  of  this  primitive  elemental  provocation  to  conflict 
it  would  be  folly  for  the  victorious  people  to  allow  the 
real  biological  victory  to  slip  through  their  fingers. 
What  history  teaches  of  the  wisdom  of  diplomatists  who 
adjust  terms  of  peace  does  not  afford  much  assurance 
that  they  might  not  commit  this  very  blunder. 

But,  war  or  no  war,  the  white  and  yellow  races  repre 
sent  two  expanding  bodies  which  are  competing  for  terri 
tory.  War  or  no  war,  supremacy  belongs  to  the  race 
that  produces  the  larger  number  of  babies  that  grow  up. 
Peaceful  penetration  may  be  just  as  effective  as  armed 
invasion,  if  not  more  so.  War  is  just  an  incident  to  real 
victory,  which  is  often  not  taken  advantage  of. 

So  long  as  the  two  races  are  in  contact  and  maintain 
themselves  without  blending,  they  are  bound  to  engage 
in  the  struggle  for  supremacy.  This  may  lead  to  con 
flict  in  the  military  sense  or  not.  The  struggle  for  ex 
istence  is  inevitable.  War  is  only  one  kind  of  struggle. 
It  may  be  avoided,  but  this  will  not  alter  in  the  least  the 
fact  that  the  Darwinian  struggle  for  existence  will  con 
tinue,  and  that,  as  a  consequence  of  this  struggle,  one 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  503 

group  will  tend  to  prevail  over  the  other.  The  meeting 
of  Oriental  and  Occidental  means  competitive  struggle 
in  one  form  or  another.  It  may  be  entirely  peaceful  and 
accompanied  by  all  the  amenities  and  suavity  of  the  most 
refined  social  contacts ;  but  the  struggle  for  existence  and 
the  process  of  selection  will  go  ruthlessly  on  just  the 
same. 

The  term  "struggle  for  existence"  is  too  frequently  in 
terpreted  as  implying  conflict.  Most  organisms  do  not 
actually  and  literally  struggle  with  one  another,  al 
though  they  may  be  engaged  in  keen  competition. 
Plants  growing  peacefully  side  by  side  are  active  com 
petitors  for  food  and  water  and  place  in  which  to  grow, 
and  it  is  very  common  to  find  one  kind  of  plant  com 
pletely  supplanting  another  species  in  a  given  locality. 
So  it  may  also  be  with  man.  Races  tend  to  expand,  and 
where  they  come  into  contact  there  is  bound  to  be  compe 
tition.  There  will  be  a  yellow  peril  to  the  white  race  and 
a  white  peril  to  the  yellow  race  wherever  contacts  occur. 

As  before  stated,  a  prime  factor  in  the  biological  for 
tunes  of  a  race  is  its  birth-rate.  It  will  be  instructive, 
therefore,  to  consider  some  features  of  our  own  birth 
rate  and  the  changes  that  have  occurred  in  it  in  recent 
years.  The  first  fact  that  calls  for  notice  in  this  connec 
tion  is  the  fall  of  the  birth-rate  which  has  been  going 
on  in  the  most  civilized  white  countries  for  the  last  few 
decades.  This  fall  began  early  in  France  and  in  the 
United  States,  but  it  apparently  did  not  affect  England, 
Germany,  and  other  northern  European  countries  until 
about  1876,  and  southern  European  countries  until  a 
rather  later  period.  In  all  European  countries  the 
death-rate  has  also  fallen  during  this  period,  and  in  some 


504  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

cases  more  rapidly  than  the  birth-rate,  so  that  the  actual 
rate  of  increase  has  become  more  rapid  than  before. 
Since,  however,  the  death-rate  in  the  healthier  countries 
cannot  be  expected  to  become  reduced  greatly  below  its 
present  figure,  a  further  decline  in  the  birth-rate  must 
inevitably  check  the  natural  rate  of  increase.  In  Ger 
many  the  birth-rate  has  declined  more  in  the  decade 
between  1900  and  1910  than  in  the  preceding  thirty 
years.  The  fall  everywhere  has  been  more  rapid  in 
cities  than  in  rural  districts,  and  is  in  general  lowest  in 
the  largest  cities.  Paris  and  other  French  towns  have 
for  long  failed  to  reproduce  themselves,  and  Berlin  by 
1910  virtually  reached  the  same  condition. 

The  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  seen  an 
enormous  relative  growth  of  city  populations,  and  in 
France,  Ireland,  and  many  parts  of  England  the  rural 
population  has  actually  fallen  off,  while  the  larger  cities 
were  rapidly  increasing  in  size.  In  most  countries  the 
rural  population  has  increased  much  more  slowly  than  the 
urban.  Labor-saving  machinery  on  farms  has  removed 
the  necessity  for  many  farm  laborers.  The  development 
of  industries  in  the  cities  has  created  means  of  livelihood 
for  the  increasing  numbers  of  the  population,  and  cities 
have  drawn  especially  those  who  are  in  the  ages  fitted 
for  industrial  employments.  The  present  indications  are 
that  in  the  future  increments  of  population  will  largely 
go  to  swell  the  ranks  of  urban  inhabitants.  Cities  have 
always  been  destroyers  of  men,  and  the  great  industrial 
development  of  which  urban  growth  is  mainly  the  out 
come  has  doubtless  been  racially  injurious,  whatever 
may  have  been  its  contributions  to  the  development  of 
civilization.  City  life  has  generally  meant  great  mor- 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  505 

tality,  shorter  life,  reduced  fecundity,  increased  drunken 
ness,  vice,  crime,  and  disease,  especially  venereal  diseases, 
high  infant  mortality,  and  a  general  deterioration  of  the 
physique  of  urban  inhabitants. 

Cities  also  tend  to  exaggerate  the  evils  of  differential 
fecundity,  which  have  been  perhaps  the  worst  features 
of  the  decline  of  the  birth-rate.  They  tend  with  especial 
rapidity  to  eliminate  those  stocks  which  have  won  suc 
cess  financially,  socially,  or  in  the  field  of  intellectual 
endeavor.  As  cities  become  larger,  as  they  will,  the 
general  birth-rate  will  tend  to  fall,  and  the  relative  ster 
ilization  of  stocks  which  carry  our  best  inheritance  will 
probably  increase. 

The  worst  feature  of  the  decline  of  our  birth-rate 
is  the  fact  that  those  who  forge  to  the  front  in  any 
social,  economic  life  leave  the  fewest  offspring,  while 
the  improvident  commonly  produce  large  families.  Not 
muchjyyer  hal^  cj_our  college-bred  women  jnjirry.  Those 
who  do,  fail  to  produce  enough  cliildren  to  maintain  their 
stock.  These  studies  have  shown  that  the  relatives  of 
college  women  and  others  of  the  same  social  status  have 
families  not  quite  as  large  as  the  college  women  them 
selves.  The  graduates  of  Harvard,  Yale,  and  several 
other  universities  fail  to  reproduce  themselves.  Cattell 
has  shown  that  American  men  of  science  fall  far  short  of 
reproducing  their  stock,  and  the  professional  classes  gen 
erally  exhibit  the  same  failing.  From  successful  busi 
ness  men  and  the  professional  classes  birth  restriction  has 
passed  on  to  the  high-class  artisans  and  skilled  workers. 
The  study  of  Miss  Elderton  of  the  declining  birth-rate  in 
the  north  of  England  proved  that  artificial  limitations  of 
birth  through  preventive  measures  and  abortion  was  very 


506  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

extensively  practised  in  the  more  intelligent,  better-paid 
working  classes,  and  that  only  those  on  the  lowest  level 
continued  to  produce  large  families.  Studies  at  the  Gal- 
ton  Laboratory  have  shown  that  low  wages,  ignorance, 
irregularity  of  employment,  and  high  fecundity  have  a 
high  positive  correlation.  Among  the  more  intelligent 
laboring  population  birth  restriction  is  rapidly  becoming 
a  settled  custom.  The  general  influence  of  socialism  is 
distinctly  toward  reduction  of  population.  It  is  among 
socialists  that  new  Malthusianism  has  received  a  warm, 
if  not  an  enthusiastic  reception.  We  find  N.  M.  societies 
springing  up,  with  their  various  journals,  in  England, 
Germany,  Austria,  France,  Italy,  Spain,  Holland,  and  in 
the  United  States,  most  of  any  large  cities  having  their 
organizations  for  spreading  the  gospel  of  birth-control. 
There  is  no  stopping  this  movement.  As  industry  de 
velops,  and  as  education  becomes  diffused  throughout  the 
masses,  it  is  bound  to  go  on.  We  may  regret  that  birth- 
control  is  exercised  by  those  whose  progeny  we  can  least 
afford  to  lose,  and  that  it  is  practised  the  least  by  those 
who  should  use  it  the  most.  But  as  matters  now  stand, 
birth-control  not  only  reduces  the  quantity  of  our  popu 
lation,  but  it  deteriorates  the  quality. 

Sooner  or  later  the  world  will  have  to  check  the  growth 
of  its  population.  If  we  do  not  take  the  matter  in  hand 
ourselves,  nature  will  do  it  for  us  through  war,  pesti 
lence,  famine,  or  all  combined,  and  the  former  method 
is  certainly  the  less  disagreeable.  Personally,  I  believe 
we  shall  witness  a  further  decline  in  the  birth-rate  in 
the  next  few  decades.  France  has  virtually  ceased  to 
increase.  The  Americans  that  go  back  more  than  two 
generations  have  either  ceased  to  increase  or  will  prob- 


SHALL  EAST  WED  WEST?  507 

ably  soon  do  so.  The  rapid  development  of  industrial 
ism,  the  increasing  pressure  of  population,  the  diffusion 
of  knowledge,  the  elevation  of  standards  of  living,  the 
diminishing  hold  of  religious  dogmas,  and  the  spreading 
custom  of  birth-control  will  all  conspire  to  bring  about  a 
rapidly  diminishing  growth  of  population  throughout 
our  Western  world,  and  also  for  some  time  at  least  a 
deterioration  of  its  quality.  That,  in  truth,  is  our  situ 
ation  in  regard  to  the  birth-rate. 

In  the  Oriental  world  we  have  in  China  an  exceed 
ingly  high  birth-rate,  which  has  been  counterbalanced 
by  a  remarkably  high  death-rate,  especially  in  infancy. 
But  it  is  not  to  be  expected  that  when  the  standard  of 
education  comes  to  be  raised  in  China  this  murderous 
infant  death-rate  will  be  suffered  to  continue.  The  por 
tentously  high  birth-rate  of  Japan  is  in  a  measure 
checked  by  a  high  infant  mortality,  but  Japan  has  now 
a  surplus  of  some  700,000  births  over  deaths.  It  is  not 
to  be  supposed  that  a  nation  which  in  its  war  with  Russia 
applied  the  principles  of  hygiene  and  sanitation  with  an 
effectiveness  never  approached  by  any  Western  power 
will  long  tolerate  her  present  high  infant  death-rate. 
This  enterprising  nation  will  be  quick  to  put  into  prac 
tice  the  methods  of  saving  infant  life  which  have  been 
carried  out  in  Europe  and  the  United  States  in  the  last 
ten  years  with  signal  success.  Japan  wants  population. 
She  wants  colonies  into  which  to  expand.  Her  people  in 
Hawaii,  Korea  and  the  Philippines  retain  their  solidarity, 
intermarry  little  with  other  races  and  rapidly  develop 
population  that  remains  Japanese  in  spirit  and  in  loyalty 
to  the  empire.  There  is  little  doubt  that  with  the  Japa 
nese  the  encouragement  of  a  high  birth-rate  is  a  na- 


508  MUST  WE  FIGHT  JAPAN? 

tional  policy.  And  if  at  present  the  net  fecundity  of 
the  Japanese  is  below  that  of  the  white  race,  the  indica 
tions  are  that  with  the  reduced  death-rate  which  a  people 
so  efficient,  patriotic,  and  far-seeing  as  the  Japanese  may 
be  relied  upon  to  effect,  the  natural  rate  of  increase  of 
population  will  probably  exceed  that  of  their  white  com 
petitors. 

It  may  be  that  industrial  development,  improved  stand 
ards  of  living,  socialism,  birth-control,  and  infection  by 
the  essential  irreligion  of  the  Western  world  may  come 
to  check  the  natural  increase  of  the  Japanese  people  and 
eventually  the  other  Asiatics,  but  these  forces,  which  are 
already  producing  some  effect,  have  to  work  against  a 
deeply  ingrained  loyalty  to  family  and  to  country  and  a 
clearly  defined  national  policy  of  expansion.  And  be 
fore  nations  arrive,  if  they  ever  will,  at  that  stage  in 
which  they  limit  their  population  to  the  point  at  which 
they  will  no  longer  be  tempted  to  make  aggressions  upon 
their  neighbors  there  will  probably  arise  many  perplex 
ing  problems  of  adjustment  between  the  Japanese  and 
Occidentals  in  various  parts  of  the  world. 

The  advancement  of  medicine  and  hygiene  can  scarcely 
fail  to  increase  the  net  fecundity  of  the  Orient.  That 
will  mean  expansion  through  immigration  or  armed 
invasion. 

Nothing  will  aggravate  the  yellow  peril  so  much  as 
the  sanitation  of  Asia.  If  that  comes,  carried  out  in  a 
thorough  and  effective  way,  it  will  inevitably  lead  to 
very  important  developments.  What  course  they  may 
take,  no  one  can  say. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 

COMPARISON  OF  AMERICAN  FAMILY  BUDGETS  WITH 
JAPANESE 

BUDGET  No.  1 

This  budget  represents  the  result  of  a  study  made  by 
the  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  to  deter- 
|  mine  the  cost  of  maintaining  the  family  of  a  government 
employee  in  Washington  at  a  level  of  health  and  decency. 
No  provision  is  made  in  this  budget  for  savings  other 
than  the  original  cost  of  household  furniture  and  equip 
ment  which  would  average  about  $1,000  in  value.  This 
represents  a  saving  of  about  12^%  of  the  yearly  salary 
since  the  time  of  marriage.  The  family  considered  in 
this  budget  is  a  husband,  wife,  a  boy  of  eleven,  a  girl  of 
five,  and  a  boy  of  two  years. 

BUDGET  No.  2 

This  budget  is  the  result  of  a  study  by  the  National 
Industrial  Conference  Board  to  establish  a  minimum 
existence  budget  for  a  family  of  five  in  industrial  centers. 
Special  attention  is  called  to  this  budget,  as  any  budget 
less  than  this  standard  does  not  cover  what  may  be  con 
sidered  a  mere  existence  level. 

BUDGET  No.  3 

This  budget  represents  the  result  of  the  estimated  ex 
penditure  of  60  farm  laborers'  families  in  the  fruit 
growing  sections  of  New  Jersey.  These  families  were 

511 


512  APPENDIX 

selected,  because  there  was  no  other  source  of  income 
worthy  of  consideration  except  the  earnings  of  the  hus 
band.  The  house  was  furnished  by  the  farmer,  together 
with  food  and  fuel  estimated  at  $140.  The  result  showed 
that  the  average  number  of  children  for  these  families 
was  three,  giving  a  family  of  five,  which  allowed  for 
actual  comparison  with  the  other  budgets  submitted. 

BUDGET  No.  4 

This  budget  represents  the  actual  distribution  of  in 
come  for  families  in  92  industrial  centers  having  an 
income  of  less  than  $900  a  year.  This  budget  does  not 
in  any  way  meet  actual  needs  and  provides  merely 
enough  to  cover  mere  existence  costs  for  the  lowest  class 
of  American  industrial  workers. 

BUDGET  No.  5 

This  represents  the  budget  of  a  Japanese  working- 
man's  family  in  Tokio.  All  items  of  expenditure  except 
those  shown  have  been  included  under  miscellaneous. 

The  following  survey  taken  from  "Millard's  Review" 
gives  us  a  further  insight  into  Japanese  budgets. 

"The  results  of  a  considerable  rise  in  the  cost  of  living,  with 
which  the  rise  in  the  incomes  of  people  in  general  did  not  keep 
pace,  has  brought  developments  emphasizing  the  fact  that  the 
millions  of  Japanese  workers  are  away  at  the  other  end  of  the 
ladder  of  good  fortune.  Even  the  average  middle  class  family 
in  Japan  is  said  to  receive  only  $25  to  $50  per  month  in  in 
come,  and  the  laborer  gets  only  50  to  75  cents  a  day.  In  Osaka, 
a  municipal  statistics  bureau  has  recently  made  a  number  of 
investigations  of  living  costs,  etc.,  and  its  figures  show  the  fol 
lowing  comparative  rise  in  costs  since  July,  1914.  Taking  the 
cost  then  as  100,  the  averages  in  June,  1919,  were : 


JAPANESE  FAMILY  BUDGET  COMPARED 

WITH  ESTIMATED  AND  ACTUAL  BUDGETS 

OF  AMERICAN  FAMILIES. 


2262 


1385 


Miscell. 

Housing 


IO80 


843 


336 


514  APPENDIX 

"Food,  215;  cotton  goods,  376;  fuel,  224;  rent,  122;  average 
of  foregoing,  209;  wages,  189. 

"And  there  has  been  a  large  increase  during  the  past  six 
months  in  the  cost  of  living.  The  rise  in  Osaka  for  November, 
1918,  to  November,  1919,  was  over  60  per  cent." 

A  WASHINGTON  CLERK'S  STANDARD  OF  LIVING 

Here  are  the  elements  which  enter  into  a  budget  of  a 
Government  clerk  in  Washington,  who  is  married  and  has 
three  children.  The  items  represent  in  each  case  an  av 
erage  struck  from  the  budget  of  280  families : 

The  number  of  calories  needed  by  a  man  at  moderately  hard 
muscular  work  is  3,500  per  day.  A  family  usually  wastes 
about  10%  of  the  caloric  value  of  food  in  preparation,  cook 
ing,  etc.,  and  also  a  small  per  cent  of  the  food  which  enters 
the  mouth  is  not  digested  or  assimilated.  Therefore,  3,500 
calories  purchased  means  approximately  3,100  to  3,200  calories 
actually  consumed  by  the  body.  The  standard  of  3,500  calories 
for  a  man  at  moderately  hard  muscular  work  is  about  right. 
The  following  food  budget  has  been  drawn  up  on  the  basis  of  a 
family  of  five — husband,  wife,  and  three  children,  boy,  11 ;  girl, 
5;  and  boy  2;  According  to  the  standard  established  by  the 
United  States  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics,  taking  the  caloric  re 
quirement  of  a  man  as  1.0,  that  of  a  woman  is  0.9;  a  boy  of 
11,  0.9;  a  girl  of  5,  0.4;  and  a  boy  of  2,  0.15,  making  a  com 
bined  food  requirement  about  equal  to  that  of  3.35  adults. 

Following  is  a  comparison  of  the  food  allowance  of  this 
budget  with  the  minimum  standards  generally  accepted  by 
scientific  students  of  the  subject: 

OUNCES  OF  FOOD  CONSUMED  PER  MAN  PER  DAY 

Dairy 

Prod-  Vege- 

Meat    Fish  ucts       Milk     Cereals     tables          Fruits  Fats  Sugar 
Average 
of  280 

families.     5.6     0.9      15.5          12.1      15.1  17.6  5.8        2.1      2.7 

tandard    4  or  5     2         16      11  or  12      12        16  or  20      16  or  20     2         2 


APPENDIX  515 

The  average  dietary  has  its  obvious  defects,  and  is 
not  recommended  as  ideal.  For  instance,  it  is  highly  de 
sirable,  from  both  an  economical  and  a  dietary  standpoint, 
for  a  family  to  secure  its  protein  from  the  use  of  eggs  and  eat 
less  meat  than  the  quantity  used  in  the  average  budget.  As 
here  presented,  the  food  budget  which  has  been  arrived  at  is 
based  on  what  the  experience  of  a  large  number  of  families 
in  various  sections  of  the  country7  shows  to  be  a  practical  mini 
mum  for  the  maintenance  of  health. 

Theoretically,  the  level  of  health  and  decency  in  clothing  has 
been  interpreted  as  a  level  which  takes  into  account  not  only 
the  physical  needs  of  warmth,  cleanliness,  and  comfort,  but 
which  also  has  such  regard  for  appearance  and  style,  as  will 
permit  the  family  members  to  appear  in  public  and  within 
their  necessarily  rather  narrow  social  circle  with  neatness  and 
self-respect.  But  an  effort  has  been  made  to  allow  only  those 
quantities  of  clothing  consistent  with  the  minimum  require 
ment  for  health  and  decency.  The  clothing  budget  has  been 
cut  down  to  what  amounts  to  almost  a  subsistence  budget.  In 
the  ease  of  the  wife  it  would  be  highly  desirable  from  the  point 
of  view  of  comfort  and  of  the  standard  expected  of  the  wife 
of  a  Government  employee  that  she  be  allowed  at  least  $50.00 
per  year  more  on  her  clothing  budget.  She  has  been  allowed 
only  one  afternoon  dress  of  wool  to  last  two  years,  and  she  has 
been  allowed  no  dress  petticoat  to  wear  with  it.  It  would  be 
much  more  satisfactory  if  she  were  allowed  one  jersey-silk 
petticoat  a  year.  It  is  questionable  if  the  georgette  waist  al 
lowed  every  other  year  can  be  made  to  last  two  years  even 
with  the  most  careful  laundering,  and  this  is  her  only  fancy 
blouse.  The  same  is  true  of  the  two  cotton  house  dresses  al 
lowed.  She  is  allowed  no  furs,  and  the  suit  allowed  is  of 
rather  light  weight,  so  that  for  the  sake  of  her  own  health  it 
would  be  much  better  if  she  could  afford  to  buy  a  better  coat 
for  winter  wear.  She  has  been  allowed  one  wool  dress  every 
two  years  for  afternoon  or  evening  wear. 


516  APPENDIX 

Only  two  night  dresses  a  year  have  been  allowed  and  these 
will  be  insufficient  if  she  has  any  illness  during  the  year.  A 
winter  hat  has  been  allowed  only  every  other  year  and  no 
allowance  has  been  made  for  retrimming.  Without  retrim- 
ming,  it  will  be  out  of  style  by  the  second  year  which  is  de 
moralizing  to  a  woman's  self-respect.  It  would  be  highly  de 
sirable  from  the  standpoint  of  comfort  and  probably  of 
economy,  if  she  were  allowed  two  pairs  of  silk  stockings  each 
year.  The  shoes  allowed  are  heavy  walking  shoes.  It  would 
be  well  if  she  were  allowed  one  pair  of  dress  shoes  at  least 
every  other  year.  The  $5.00  allowance  for  miscellaneous  items 
is  very  small  when  the  simplest  collar  and  cuff  set  is  at  least  a 
dollar,  when  hair  nets  that  last  only  a  few  days  are  ~L2l/2  cents 
each,  and  when  all  other  miscellaneous  items  have  doubled  in 
price. 

Annual  cost  of  rent,  fuel  and  light $428.00 

Housing  standard:  The  minimum  housing  standard  for  a 
family  of  five  has  been  taken  as  one  of  four  rooms  with 
bath  and  running  water.  The  possession  of  a  bath  and  run 
ning  water  is  necessary  to  health  and  cleanliness.  The  pos 
session  of  four  rooms  is  absolutely  necessary  to  a  family  of 
five  to  prevent  extreme  overcrowding,  and  is,  of  course,  the 
minimum.  It  would  mean  a  kitchen,  a  combined  living  and 
dining  room  and  two  bedrooms,  with  the  necessity  in  many 
cases  of  the  combined  living  and  dining  room  being  used  as 
a  sleeping  room. 

Upkeep  of  house  furniture  and  furnishings $70.00 

This  budget  takes  for  granted  that  the  prudent  man  and 
woman  have  attended  to  securing  their  furniture  before  they 
have  the  burden  of  a  large  family;  and  therefore  that  ex 
pense  need  not  be  considered  in  attempting  to  fix  a  living 
budget  for  a  family  when  it  is  at  its  period  of  maximum  ex 
pense.  However,  the  upkeep  of  house  furnishings  such  as 
bedding,  linens,  etc.,  is  a  necessary  recurrent  expense.  6% 
of  the  total  value  of  the  furniture  has  been  allowed  for  this 


APPENDIX  517 

item.  A  special  investigation  by  agents  of  the  Bureau  of 
Labor  Statistics  determined  that  the  minimum  amounts  of 
furnishings  necessary  for  a  house  of  this  size  cost  $1,083. 
Even  if  some  second-hand  furniture  were  bought,  this  total 
could  not  well  be  reduced  below  $1,000.  For  annual  upkeep 
6%  of  this  amount  or  $60  would  be  necessary.  About  ten 
or  eleven  dollars  is  required  for  curtains,  electric  light  bulbs, 
etc. 

Laundry  work,  assistance  with  washing  1  day  per  week  $104.00 
The  wife  is  presumed  to  do  the  cooking  for  the  family,  to 
do  the  cleaning  of  the  house,  to  make  most  of  the  simpler 
garments  worn  by  herself  and  the  children,  to  keep  all 
clothes  in  repair,  to  care  for  the  children,  and  to  do  the 
marketing.  It  would  be  unreasonable  to  expect  that  she 
should  do  the  laundry  work  unassisted,  so  this  budget  has  al 
lowed  for  the  assistance  of  one  person  for  one  day  each  week 
and  $2.00  is  about  the  prevailing  rate  in  Washington  for 
this  kind  of  service. 

Cleaning  supplies  and  services   $32.92 

These  include  toilet  soap,  toothbrush,  toothpaste,  combs, 
hairbrushes,  shoe  polish,  barber's  services:  husband's  hair 
cut,  children's  haircut,  household:  laundry  soap,  a/2  pound 
bar,  starch,  unspecified  cleaning  supplies  and  services,  such 
as  borax,  ammonia,  washing  powder,  bluing,  insect  powder, 
etc. 

Health    $80.00 

Some  allowance  must  of  course  be  made  for  the  mainte 
nance  of  health.  This  expenditure  includes  physician, 
dentist,  oculist,  glasses,  and  drugs,  both  prescriptions  and 
prepared  remedies. 

No  definite  number  of  visits  to  the  doctor  can  be  assumed 
as  necessary,  but  aside  from  the  occurrence  of  major  ill 
nesses,  colds  and  the  various  diseases  of  childhood  will  doubt 
less  make  a  doctor's  services  necessary  at  some  time  during 
the  year. 


518  APPENDIX 

At  least  one  visit  to  the  dentist  during  the  year  for  three 
members  of  the  family  will  be  necessary,  and  rarely  does  one 
visit  prove  sufficient. 

A  special  investigation  of  the  expenditures  of  64  families 
during  the  year  ending  July  31,  1919,  shows  the  average  ex 
penditures  for  doctor,  dentist,  oculist,  and  other  items  neces 
sary  for  the  maintenance  of  health  to  have  been  $90.37. 
Insurance:     (a)   Life,  $5,000  ordinary  policy,  yearly 

premium $110.00 

The  male  head  of  a  family  should  carry  insurance  on  his 
life  to  protect  his  wife  and  children.  In  order  to  do  this  it 
is  necessary  that  his  yearly  income  be  sufficient  to  meet  the 
yearly  insurance  premiums.  The  only  question  would  seem 
to  be  as  to  the  amount  of  insurance  which  should  be  carried. 
It  would  seem  that  a  $5,000  policy  would  be  the  minimum 
for  protection  and  safety.  In  the  event  of  the  husband's 
death  this  would  assure  an  income  to  the  wife  and  children 
of  not  over  $300  per  year,  or  $6  per  week. 
Insurance :  (b)  Furniture $1.50 

Furniture  insurance  is  a  cheap  form  of  insurance  which  it 
is  highly  important  that  every  family  should  carry,  as  the 
loss  of  household  equipment  is  an  extremely  serious  matter 
to  a  family  of  low  means.  Inquiry  made  of  the  Underwrit 
ers'  Association  of  the  District  of  Columbia  shows  that  the 
annual  premium  of  $100  worth  of  furniture  (in  a  brick 
house)  is  15  cents  per  year  when  paid  for  a  period  of  fivo 
years.  Insurance  on  $1,000  worth  of  furniture,  which  would 
be  about  the  average  value  of  furniture  of  the  type  of  fam 
ily  had  in  mind  in  this  study,  would  be  $1.50. 
Car  fare,  900  rides $45.00 

There  are  many  Government  employees  in  Washington 
who  live  so  near  their  offices  that  car  fare  is  an  expense  that 
need  rarely  be  incurred.  On  the  other  hand,  the  large  area 
covered  by  the  city  and  its  suburbs  makes  it  absolutely  nec 
essary  for  a  considerable  portion  of  the  employees  to  ride  to 


APPENDIX  519 

and  from  their  work,  and  for  another  portion  of  the  em 
ployees  to  ride  at  least  a  part  of  the  time.  In  view  of  this 
it  seems  reasonable  to  allow  the  husband  two  car  rides  per 
day  for  each  working  day,  or  600  rides  in  total. 

Approximately  three  trips  per  week  on  the  street  car  have 
been  allowed  for  the  wife  and  children.  Local  open  markets 
within  easy  walking  distance  are  available  to  comparatively 
few  families  in  Washington,  and  many  who  walk  one  way 
must  take  a  car  home  after  the  market  basket  has  been 
filled.  In  addition  to  this,  the  mother  of  three  children  will 
need  to  make  occasional  trips  to  the  stores  in  the  central 
part  of  the  city  to  purchase  clothing  for  the  family,  and  it 
will  be  necessary  usually  for  her  to  take  with  her  the  2-  and 
5-year-old  children,  involving  two  ear  fares.  It  is  assumed 
that  the  children  will  be  able  to  walk  to  and  from  school. 

Amusements  and  recreation $20.00 

The  importance  of  recreation  as  a  factor  in  healthy  living 
need  not,  of  course,  be  emphasized.  It  is  accepted  as  an 
everyday  fact.  The  only  question  is  as  to  the  character  and 
cost  of  such  recreation.  Much  wholesome  amusement  arises, 
naturally,  within  the  circle  of  the  family  and  its  friends  and 
costs  nothing.  On  the  other  hand  the  complexity  of  modern 
life  in  the  city  places  a  money  price  on  many  simple  and 
desirable  forms  of  amusements.  Thus  a  picnic  for  a  family, 
or  a  visit  to  the  park,  involves  a  considerable  item  of  car 
fare,  while  a  trip  on  the  river  will  cost  a  dollar  or  more. 
Moreover,  occasional  visits  to  the  moving  pictures  are  to 
be  expected  of  at  least  some  members  of  a  family.  Thus, 
even  though  the  more  expensive  forms  of  amusement  and 
recreation,  such  as  summer  vacations,  are  eliminated,  some 
expenditures  for  this  item  are  absolutely  necessary  if  a 
family  is  not  to  lead  a  completely  isolated  life. 

It  is  impossible,  however,  to  establish  quantity  standards 
for  amusements  and  recreations.  The  most  reasonable 
method  would,  therefore,  seem  to  be  to  use  as  a  guide  the 


520  APPENDIX 

average  amount  expended  by  families  of  Government  em 
ployees.  A  special  investigation  of  expenditures  of  64 
families  of  Government  employees  in  Washington  shows 
that  their  average  expenditures  for  amusements  and  recre 
ation  during  the  year  ending  July  31,  1919,  amounted  ap 
proximately  to  $20.  On  the  average  these  families  had 
expended  a  similar  amount  on  vacations,  but  no  allowance 
for  vacation  has  been  made  on  this  budget. 
Newspapers 1  daily  newspaper,  $8.40 

A  newspaper,  daily  and  Sunday  issues,  is  placed  in  the 
budget  because  it  is  desirable  that  every  citizen  should  read 
a  daily  paper.  In  addition,  the  modern  newspaper  offers  a 
variety  of  literary  and  educational  features  at  a  minimum 
expense. 

No  allowance  is  made  for  magazines  or  books,  not  because 
the  reading  thereof  is  not  desirable,  but  because  a  family, 
forced  to  careful  economy,  may  avail  itself  of  the  public 
libraries  for  all  forms  of  literature. 

The  yearly  subscription  rates  of  the  Washington  news 
papers  vary  slightly,  with  $8.40  as  the  minimum.  It  is  felt 
that  the  maximum  should  be  allowed  in  order  to  permit  the 
reader  his  choice  of  newspapers. 

Organizations,  such  as  the  church  and  labor  unions,  play 
such  an  important  part  in  life  that  some  expenditure  on 
this  account  must  be  regarded  as  essential.  Expenditures 
for  this  purpose  are  accepted  as  necessary  for  the  majority 
of  families  only  in  the  case  of  the  church  and  labor  organi 
zations;  membership  in  other  organizations,  such  as  the  Red 
Cross  Society,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.,  and  social  clubs  may  be  very 
desirable,  but  cannot  be  regarded  as  necessary  for  a  family 
with  a  low  income, 
(a)  Church  and  other  religious  organizations $13.00 

Membership  in,  or  regular  attendance  at  church  almost 
compels  contributions  in  one  form  or  another.  Not  to  be 
able  to  contribute  usually  makes  the  individual  feel  so  "un- 


APPENDIX  521 

comfortable"  that  he  feels  unwilling  to  attend.  Just  what 
the  minimum  contribution  should  be  is  difficult  to  determine. 
In  any  ease,  a  family  contribution  of  25  cents  a  week  would 
seem  to  be  a  bare  minimum. 

(b)  Labor  organizations $10.00 

Membership  in  a  labor  organization  always  involves  con 
tributions.  The  amount  of  these  varies.  The  craft  unions 
to  which  many  employees  in  the  navy  yard  and  other  me 
chanical  divisions  belong  have  higher  dues  than  the  clerical 
workers'  organizations.  The  most  reasonable  method  of  ar 
riving  at  a  minimum  allowance  for  this  purpose  would  be 
to  use  as  a  guide  the  average  amount  actually  paid  for  labor 
organization  dues  by  Government  employees.  The  average 
for  64  families  of  Government  employees  in  Washington 
during  the  past  year  was  $10.08  each. 

Incidentals $52.00 

Many  other  items,  mostly  small  or  occasional,  cannot  be 
entirely  avoided  by  a  family — such,  for  instance,  as  moving 
expenses,  burial  expenses,  stationery  and  postage,  telephon 
ing  or  telegraphing  at  times,  patriotic  contributions,  and 
charity.  Also  a  few  minor  comforts — such,  perhaps,  as  to 
bacco — are  almost  in  the  category  of  necessities  for  certain 
people.  No  minimum  quantities  for  these  items  can  pos 
sibly  be  specified.  The  only  solution  is  to  grant  a  modest 
sum  of  money  as  a  maximum. 

The  amount  granted  by  this  budget  is  $1  per  week. 

Mr.  Lauck  found  that  the  cost  of  supporting  a  family 
of  five  on  this  level  of  existence  in  Washington  was 
$2,533.97  in  May,  1920.  In  Lawrence,  Massachusetts, 
it  ran  only  to  $1,790.68. 

The  following  estimates  on  population  were  made  by 
the  United  States  Bureau  of  Education  in  June,  1919. 

Estimated  population  of  the  Hawaiian  territory,  June 
30,  1919 : 


522 

Nationality 


APPENDIX 


Total  Percentage 
of  total 

Asiatics   159,900  60.6 

Japanese 110,000  41.7 

Chinese  22,800  8.6 

Koreans 5,100  1.9 

Filipinos  22,000  8.4 

Polynesians 39,260  14.8 

Hawaiians 22,600  8.6 

Caucasian-Hawaiians   10,760  2.2 

Asiatic-Hawaiians 5,900  4.0 

Latins   32,800  12.4 

Portuguese  25,000  9.5 

Spanish 2,400  .9 

Porto  Ricans 5,400  2.0 

Americans,  British,  Germans 1,000  11.8 

Russians,  etc. 

Miscellaneous  706  .4 

263,666  100.  ~ 


ESTIMATED  ELECTORATE  IN  1930  AND  1940. 
OF  HAWAII. 


TERRITORY 


Electorate  ex 
clusive  of 
Japanese  . . 

Japanese  com 
ing  of  age 
less  thirteen 
per  cent  for 
deaths  and 
removals  . 


Electorate 
in  1918 


19,837 


237 


20,124 


Estimated  Estimated          Estimated 

additions  total  elec-  additions 

1918-1920        torate — 1930       1930-1940 


8,220 


10,628 

18,848 


25,057 


10,915 
38,972 


6,850 


19,942 
26/792" 


APPENDIX 


523 


The  following  table  of  occupations  shows  an  interest 
ing  variety  of  work  being  done  by  Japanese  in  Cali 
fornia.  The  figures  have  been  compiled  by  the  Japanese 
Association  of  America. 


SOUTHERN  CALIFORNIA 

Professional 347 

Merchants    1,397 

Farmers 3,199 

Nursery  280 

Dairy  61 

Fishery 543 

Miscellaneous    1,128 

Clerks 713 

Farm  Laborers 3,639 

Fishermen    724 

Other  workmen. 

Indoors 1,065 

Outdoor   1,432 

In  and  outdoor   . .  991 

Students 303 

Women 6,507 

Children 

American  born 7,139 

Japanese  Born 960 


30,528 


NORTHERN  CALIFORNIA 

Commercial 

Employers 3,307 

Employees 793 

Domestic  Labor 1,022 

Agricultural  .... 

Employers     4,696 

Employees 10,605 


20,423 


Women    9,032 

Minors  under  17  years   11,092 
Others    2,849 


43,396 

Subsequent         correc 
tions,          corrections, 

not  stated 4,704 

Southern    California     30,528 


Total  . .  78,628 


ESTIMATES  OF  FUTURE  JANPANESE  POPULATION  IN 
CALIFORNIA 

"We  have  asked  Mr.  Thompson  to  compute  the  probable 
growth  of  the  Japanese  colonies  in  California  for  the 
next  forty  years  on  the  basis  of  three  different  assump- 


524  APPENDIX 

tions.  "We  present  his  interesting  tables  below.  The 
first  one  assumes  that  Japanese  immigration  is  cheeked 
immediately,  so  that  the  future  increase  will  come  wholly 
from  Japanese  already  in  the  State.  The  second  table 
assumes  that  Japanese  continue  to  enter  at  the  same  rate 
as  for  the  last  ten  years,  and  the  third  table  assumes  the 
influx  to  bear  the  same  ratio  to  the  total  Japanese  popu 
lation  of  the  State  as  it  has  during  the  last  decade.  In 
each  table  Mr.  Thompson  accepts  the  estimates  of  the 
State  Board  of  Control  as  his  point  of  departure. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  Mr.  Thompson's  findings 
with  the  wild  forecasts  of  sundry  journalistic  prophets 
on  the  Pacific  coast,  some  of  whom  see  millions  of  Jap 
anese  swarming  from  vale  to  mountain-top,  from  Canada 
to  Mexico,  in  another  thirty  years  or  so. 

TABLE  I 

Estimate  of  the  Japanese  population  in  California  by  de 
cades  1920-60  on  the  supposition  that  Japanese  immigration  is 
excluded  henceforth. 

Probable    natural    in-  Probable  popu- 

crease    of   population  lation  at  given 

during  decade  date 
ending 

Jan.  1,  1920 87,279 

Jan.  1,  1930 117,279 

Jan.  1,  1940 152,279 

Jan.  1,  1950 190,279 

Jan.  1,  1960 228,279 

1.  The  excess  of  births  over  deaths  for  the  decade 
1920-30  is  based  upon  an  estimate  of  thirty-five  per  cent 
increase  from  this  source ;  for  the  decade  1930-40,  thirty 
per  cent  for  the  decade  1940-50,  twenty-five  per  cent 
for  the  decade  1950-60,  twenty  per  cent.  I  believe  that 


APPENDIX  525 

TABLE  II 

Estimate  of  the  Japanese  population  in  California  by  de 
cades  for  the  period  1920-60  on  the  supposition  that  the  num 
ber  of  Japanese  immigrants  entering  California  is  the  same 
for  each  decade  as  during  the  decade  1910-20. 

Increase  of  popu- 


Probable  o"  Pr°bable    natural    in- 

population  "  crease   of   population 

*ri™  STation  durin*  decade 

dates  during  decade  endin* 

ending 

Jan.  1,  1920.  .  .  .20,331  25,592  87,279 

Jan.  1,  1930....  30,000  25,592  142,871 

Jan.  1,  1940.  .  .  .43,000  25,592  211,463 

Jan.  1,  1950....  53,000  25,592  290,055 

Jan.  1,  1960.  .  .  .58,000  25,592  372,&47 
1.  The  rate  of  natural  increase  used  in  this  table  is  the  same 
as  that  used  in  table  1. 

TABLE  III 

Estimate  of  the  Japanese  population  in  California  by  de 
cades  for  the  period  1920-60  on  the  supposition  that  the  num 
ber  of  immigrants  entering  California  during  each  of  these  de 
cades  bears  the  same  ratio  to  the  total  Japanese  population  in 
California  at  the  beginning  of  each  decade  as  it  did  during  the 
decade  1910-20. 


Jan 

Probable    natural    in 
crease    of    population 
during  decade 
ending 

1,  1920          ^0,331. 

Increase  of  popu 
lation  from  ex 
cess  of  immi 
gration  over 
emigration 
during  decade 
ending 

25,592  

Probable 
population 
at  given 
date 

....      87,279 

Jan. 
Jan 

1,  1930  30,000. 
1    1940          51  000 

54,000  
.106,000  

....    171,279 
328,279 

Jan 

1    1950          8°  000 

.     203,000  

613,279 

Jan. 

1,  I960....  123,000. 

....380,000  

....1,116,279 

1.  In  this  table  the  same  percentages  for  rate  of  natural 
increase  are  used  as  in  tables  1  and  2. 


526  APPENDIX 

these  estimates  are  not  excessive,  because  the  Japanese 
population  in  California  is  at  present  largely  made  up 
of  men  and  women  in  the  early  years  of  the  child-bearing 
period,  and  as  a  result  the  rate  of  natural  increase  by 
excess  of  births  over  deaths  will  be  very  high  until  the 
age  grouping  becomes  more  normal. 

COMPARATIVE  COSTS  OF  MILITARY  MAINTENANCE 

The  following  official  figures  taken  from  the  Japan 
Year  Book  for  1919-20  show  the  detailed  cost  of  main 
taining  Japanese  soldiers.  In  reading  them,  bear  al 
ways  in  mind  that  1  yen  is  nominally  fifty  cents  Ameri 
can,  but  at  present  has  something  like  double  the  pur 
chasing  power  of  our  money  in  Japan.  For  roughly 
accurate  comparisons,  think  of  a  yen  as  a  dollar  in  terms 
of  what  it  buys. 

Allowances  to  troops  in  Japan  are  allowed  on  contract  plan 
as  regards  the  5  items  of  food,  clothing,  encampment-utensils, 
barrack  necessities  and  horse  allowances.  The  allowances  are 
fixed  as  below: — 

Food. — 6  go  (1  quart)  of  rice  a  day  for  a  soldier,  besides 
some  money  allowance  for  side-dishes.  The  money  allowances 
differ  according  to  districts  where  troops  are  stationed,  rang 
ing  for  regiments  at  home  from  7.5  sen  per  diem  to  11.4  sen 
(for  Hokkaido),  12  to  15  sen  for  the  Formosan  garrisons,  and 
24  sen  for  those  in  China  and  18  sen  for  Korea  and  Saghalien. 

Clothing. — From  yen  27  to  yen  34  a  year  for  each  foot 
soldier,  yen  31  to  37  for  Cavalry,  yen  30  to  36  for  Artillery, 
yen  28  to  34  for  Engineering  and  yen  29  to  35  for  Commis 
sariats. 

Encampment  utensils  and  barrack  necessities. — There  are  26 
grades  ranging  from  the  lowest  of  yen  4.64  a  month  for  the 


APPENDIX  527 

utensils  and  yen  6.76  for  the  others  to  the  maximum  of  over 
yen  138  and  yen  106.58  respectively. 

Horse  allowance. — Barley,  hay  and  straw  constitute  fodder. 
Per  head  rates  a  day  are  1  kwan  of  hay  or  straw,  and  from 
1.4  kwan  of  barley  according  to  the  services;  36  to  55  sen 
per  month  for  hoofing  and  25  sen  a  year  for  hair-cutting. 


This  total  allowance  of  approximately  11  yen  in  terms 
of  American  money  equals  about  $5.50  a  month  for  the 
average  foot  soldier,  out  of  which  he  draws  his  salary 
and  all  his  living  and  maintenance  expenses.  The  Amer 
ican  soldier  receives  $30  a  month  straight  salary.  All  his 
expenses  are  paid  by  the  Government.  The  comparison 
is  obvious,  all  but  for  one  point.  A  yen  is  worth  50 
cents  in  American  money,  but  in  Japan  its  purchasing 
power  is  $1.00. 

The  United  States  Army  standard  rations  cost  around 
40  cents,  and  include  27  articles:  beef,  bacon,  hash,  sal 
mon,  soup,  bread,  beans,  rice,  potatoes,  jam,  tomatoes, 
prunes,  dried  fruits,  butter,  and  the  usual  cooking  acces 
sories.  The  Japanese  ration  is  a  quart  of  rice  and  4 
cents,  which  means  about  16  to  20  cents  a  day,  even  at 
the  present  abnormally  high  cost  of  rice. 

The  meaning  of  these  figures,  as  well  as  of  the  current 
military  appropriations  of  Japan,  depends  entirely  upon 
the  kind  of  war  to  be  waged.  Thus,  on  the  hypothesis 
of  a  war  directed  against  the  continental  United  States, 
Japan's  army  and  navy  budget  is  ridiculously  small.  In 
fact,  the  size  of  it  is  proof  enough  that  the  Japanese 
Government  is  not  entertaining  even  the  possibility  of 
offensive  warfare  against  us.  On  the  other  hand,  when 


528  APPENDIX 

construed  as  an  outlay  for  a  defensive  war  fought  in  Far 
Eastern  waters,  its  effectiveness  is  anywhere  from  four 
to  ten  times  that  of  the  American  budget,  the  latter  being 
regarded  now  as  one  for  a  long-distance  war. 

It  is  now  plain  how  misleading  many  reassuring  state 
ments  about  Japan's  intentions  have  been,  notably  those 
made  by  Eastern  journals  like  the  New  York  "Times," 
which,  in  a  recent  editorial,  declares  that  "since  Japan's 
proposed  outlay  on  her  military  forces  is  moderate  com 
pared  with  ours,  it  must  be  evident  that  Japan  is  not 
trying  to  steal  a  march  upon  the  United  States  by  pre 
paredness  for  wax  on  a  large  scale." 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


•i  APR  8     1968  6  9 

R] 

_  M  11  '68-12  Pw1 

SIP  1  2  mt 

H 

_ 

_ 



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